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THE PROVINCIAL AMERICAN AND OTHER 

PAPERS. 
A HOOSIER CHRONICLE. With illustrations. 

THE SIEGE OF THE SEVEN SUITORS. With 
illustrations. 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
Boston and Nbw York 



The Provincial American 



The Provincial American 

And Other Papers 

By 
Meredith Nicholson 




Boston and New York 

Houghton Mifflin Company 

19 12 



5«l-'^ 






COPYRIGHT, I912, BY MEREDITH NICHOLSON 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published October iqi2 



£CI.A327297 



To 

George Edward Woodberry 

Guide, Counselor 

And the most inspiring of Friends 

This Volume is Dedicated 

With grateful and affectionate 

Regard 



Indianapolis, September igj2. 



Contents 



The Provincial American . 

Edward Eggleston 

A Provincial Capital . 

Experience and the Calendar 

Should Smith go to Church ? 

The Tired Business Man . 

The Spirit of Mischief : A Dialogue 

Confessions of a "Best-Seller*' . 



I 

33 
55 

89 

115 

159 
187 

205 



These papers, with one exception, have appeared in the Atlantic 
Monthly. A part of "Experience and the Calendar," under 
another title, was published in the Reader Magazine. 



The Provincial American 
And Other Papers 



The Provincial American 

Viola. What country, friends, is this? 
Captain. This is lUyria, lady. 

Viola. And what should I do in Illyria? 
My brother he is in Elysium. 

Twelfth Night. 

I AM a provincial American. My forebears 
were farmers or country-town folk. They 
followed the long trail over the mountains out 
of Virginia and North Carolina, with brief so- 
journs in western Pennsylvania and Kentucky. 
My parents were born, the one in Kentucky, 
the other in Indiana, within two and four hours 
of the spot where I pen these reflections, and I 
had voted before I saw the sea or any Eastern 
city. 

In attempting to illustrate the provincial 
point of view out of my own experiences I am 
moved by no wish to celebrate either the 
Hoosier commonwealth — which has not lacked 
nobler advertisement — or myself; but by the 
hope that I may cheer many who, flung by fate 
upon the world's byways, shuffle and shrink 

3 



The Provincial American 

under the reproach of their metropolitan 
brethren. 

Mr. George Ade has said, speaking of our 
fresh-water colleges, that Purdue University, his 
own alma mater, offers everything that Harvard 
provides except the sound of a as in " father." 
I have been told that I speak our lingua rustica 
only slightly corrupted by urban contacts. 
Anywhere east of Buffalo I should be known as 
a Westerner; I could not disguise myself if I 
would. I find that I am most comfortable in a 
town whose population does not exceed a fifth 
of a million, — a place in which men may re- 
linquish their seats in the street car to women 
without having their motives questioned, and 
where one calls the stamp-clerk at the post- 
office by his first name. 

I 

Across a hill-slope that knew my childhood, a 
bugle's grieving melody used to float often 
through the summer twilight. A highway lay 
hidden in the little vale below, and beyond it the 
unknown musician was quite concealed, and 
was never visible to the world I knew. Those 

4 



The Provincial American 

tnimpetings have lingered always in my mem- 
ory, and color my recollections of all that was 
near and dear in those days. Men who had left 
camp and field for the soberer routine of civil 
life were not yet fully domesticated. My bugler 
was merely solacing himself for lost joys by 
recurring to the vocabulary of the trumpet. I 
am confident that he enjoyed himself; and I am 
equally sure that his tnimpetings peopled the 
dusk for me with great captains and mighty 
armies, and touched with a certain militancy all 
my youthful dreaming. 

No American boy born during or immedi- 
ately after the Civil War can have escaped in 
those years the vivid impressions derived from 
the sight and speech of men who had fought its 
battles, or women who had known its terror and 
grief. Chief among my pla5i1:hings on that 
peaceful hillside was the sword my father had 
borne at Shiloh and on to the sea ; and I remem- 
ber, too, his uniform coat and sash and epaulets 
and the tattered guidon of his battery, that, 
falling to my lot as toys, yet imparted to my 
childish consciousness a sense of what war had 
been. The young imagination was kindled in 

5 



The Provincial American 

those days by many and great names. Lincoln, 
Grant, and Sherman were among the first lisp- 
ings of Northern children of my generation; and 
in the little town where I was born lived men 
who had spoken with them face to face. I did 
not know, until I sought them later for myself, 
the fairy-tales that are every child's birthright; 
and I imagine that children of my generation 
heard less of 

"old, unhappy, far-off things, 
And battles long ago," — 

and more of the men and incidents of contem- 
poraneous history. Great spirits still on earth 
were sojourning. I saw several times, in his last 
years, the iron-willed Hoosler War Governor, 
Oliver P. Morton. By the time I was ten, a 
broader field of observation opening through 
my parents' removal to the state capital, I had 
myself beheld Grant and Sherman; and every 
day I passed in the street men who had been 
partners with them in the great, heroic, sad, 
splendid struggle. These things I set down as 
a background for the observations that follow, 
— less as text than as point of departure; yet I 

6 



The Provincial American 

believe that bugler, sounding " charge " and 
" retreat " and " taps " in the dusk, and those 
trappings of war beneath whose weight I strutted 
upon that hillside, did much toward establishing 
in me a certain habit of mind. From that hill- 
side I have since ineluctably viewed my coun- 
try and my countrymen and the larger world. 

Emerson records Thoreau's belief that "the 
flora of Massachusetts embraced almost all 
the important plants of America, — most of 
the oaks, most of the willows, the best pines, 
the ash, the maple, the beech, the nuts. He 
returned Kane's * Arctic Voyage ' to a friend 
of whom he had borrowed it, with the remark 
that most of the phenomena noted might be 
observed in Concord." 

The complacency of the provincial mind is 
due less, I believe, to stupidity and ignorance, 
than to the fact that every American county is 
in a sense complete, a political and social unit, 
in which the sovereign rights of a free people are 
expressed by the court-house and town hall, 
spiritual freedom by the village church-spire, 
and hope and aspiration in the school-house. 
Every reader of American fiction, particularly 

7 



The Provincial American 

in the realm of the short story, must have ob- 
served the great variety of quaint and racy 
characters disclosed. These are the dramatis 
fersoncBoi that great American novel which some 
one has said is being written in installments. 
Writers of fiction hear constantly of characters 
who would be well worth their study. In read- 
ing two recent novels that penetrate to the heart 
of provincial life, Mr. White's "A Certain Rich 
Man" and Mrs. Watts's "Nathan Burke," I 
felt that the characters depicted might, with 
unimportant exceptions, have been found al- 
most anywhere in those American States that 
shared the common history of Kansas and 
Ohio. Mr. Winston Churchill, in his admirable 
novels of New England, has shown how closely 
the purely local is allied to the universal. 

When "David Harum" appeared, characters 
similar to the hero of that novel were reported 
in every part of the country. I rarely visit a 
town that has not its cracker-barrel philosopher, 
or a poet who would shine but for the callous 
heart of the magazine editor, or an artist of su- 
preme though unrecognized talent, or a forensic 
orator of wonderful powers, or a mechanical 

8 



The Provincial American 

genius whose inventions are bound to revolu- 
tionize the industrial world. In Maine, in the 
back room of a shop whose windows looked 
down upon a tidal river, I have listened to tariff 
discussions in the dialect of Hosea Biglow; and 
a few weeks later have heard farmers along the 
un-salt Wabash debating the same questions 
from a point of view that revealed no masted 
ships or pine woods, with a new sense of the fine 
tolerance and sanity and reasonableness of our 
American people. Mr. James Whitcomb Riley, 
one of our shrewdest students of provincial char- 
acter, introduced me one day to a friend of his 
in a village near Indianapolis who bore a strik- 
ing resemblance to Abraham Lincoln, and who 
had something of Lincoln's gift for humorous 
narration. This man kept a country store, and 
his attitude toward his customers, and "trade" 
in general, was delicious in its drollery. Men 
said to be "like Lincoln" have not been rare in 
the Mississippi Valley, and politicians have been 
known to encourage belief in the resemblance. 
Colonel Higginson once said that in the Cam- 
bridge of his youth any member of the Harvard 
faculty could answer any question within the 

9 



The Provincial American 

range of human knowledge; whereas in these 
days of specialization some man can answer the 
question, but it may take a week's investigation 
to find him. In " our town " — "a poor virgin, 
sir, an ill-favored thing, sir, but mine own! " — 
I dare say it was possible in that post-bellum era 
to find men competent to deal with almost any 
problem. These were mainly men of humble 
beginnings and all essentially the product of our 
American provinces. I should like to set down 
briefly the ineffaceable impression some of 
these characters left upon me. I am precluded 
by a variety of considerations from extending 
this recital. The rich field of education I ignore 
altogether; and I may mention only those who 
have gone. As it is beside my purpose to prove 
that mine own people are other than typical of 
those of most American communities, I check 
my exuberance. Sad, indeed, the offending if I 
should protest too much! 

II 

In the days when the bugle still mourned 
across the vale, Lew Wallace was a citizen of 
my native town of Crawfordsville. There he 

10 



The Provincial American 

had amused himself, in the years immediately 
before the civil conflict, in drilling a company of 
"Algerian Zouaves" known as the "Mont- 
gomery Guards," of which my father was a 
member, and this was the nucleus of the Elev- 
enth Indiana Regiment which Wallace com- 
manded in the early months of the war. It is 
not, however, of Wallace's military Services 
that I wish to speak now, nor of his writings, 
but of the man himself as I knew him later 
at the capital, at a time when, in the neighbor- 
hood of the federal building at Indianapolis, any 
boy might satisfy his longing for heroes with a 
sight of many of our Hoosier Olympians. He was 
of medium height, erect, dark to swarthiness, 
with finely chiseled features and keen black eyes, 
with manners the most courtly, and a voice 
unusually musical and haunting. His appear- 
ance, his tastes, his manner, were strikingly 
Oriental. 

He had a strong theatric instinct, and his life 
was filled with drama — with melodrama, even. 
His curiosity led him into the study of many 
subjects, most of them remote from the affairs 
of his day. He was both dreamer and man of 

II 



The Provincial American 

action; he could be "idler than the idlest 
flowers," yet his occupations were many and 
various. He was an aristocrat and a democrat; 
he was wise and temperate, whimsical and inju- 
dicious in a breath. As a youth he had seen 
visions, and as an old man he dreamed dreams. 
The mysticism in him was deep-planted, and 
he was always a little aloof, a man apart. His 
capacity for detachment was like that of Sir 
Richard Burton, who, at a great company given 
in his honor, was found alone poring over a puz- 
zling Arabic manuscript in an obscure comer of 
the house. Wallace, like Burton, would have 
reached Mecca, if chance had led him to that 
adventure. 

Wallace dabbled in politics without ever 
being a politician; and I might add that he 
practiced law without ever being, by any high 
standard, a lawyer. He once spoke of the law as 
"that most detestable of human occupations." 
First and last he tried his hand at all the arts. 
He painted a little; he moulded a little in clay; 
he knew something of music and played the 
violin; he made three essays in romance. As 
boy and man he went soldiering; he was a civil 

12 



The Provincial American 

governor, and later a minister to Turkey. In 
view of his sympathetic Interest in Eastern Kfe 
and character, nothing could have been more 
appropriate than his appointment to Constanti- 
nople. The Sultan Abdul Hamid, harassed and 
anxious, used to send for him at odd hours of 
the night to come and talk to him, and offered 
him on his retirement a number of positions in 
the Turkish Government. 

With all this rich experience of the larger 
world, he remained the simplest of natures. He 
was as interested in a new fishing-tackle as In a 
new book, and carried both to his houseboat on 
the Kankakee, where, at odd moments, he re- 
touched a manuscript for the press, or dis- 
cussed politics with the natives. Here was a 
man who could talk of the " Song of Roland " as 
zestfully as though it had just been reported 
from the telegraph-office. 

I frankly confess that I never met him with- 
out a thrill, even in his last years and when the 
ardor of my youthful hero-worship may be said 
to have passed. He was an exotic, our Hoosler 
Arab, our story-teller of the bazaars. When 
I saw him in his last illness, It was as though 
.13 



The Provincial American 

I looked upon a gray sheik about to fare forth 
unawed toward unmapped oases. 

No lesson of the Civil War was more striking 
than that taught by the swift transitions of our 
citizen soldiery from civil to military life, and 
back again. This Impressed me as a boy, and I 
used to wonder, as I passed my heroes on their 
peaceful errands in the street, why they had put 
down the sword when there must still be work 
somewhere for fighting men to do. The judge 
of the federal court at this time was Walter Q. 
Gresham, brevetted brigadier-general, who was 
destined later to adorn the Cabinets of Pre- 
sidents of two political parties. He was cordial 
and magnetic; his were the handsomest and 
friendliest of brown eyes, and a noble gravity 
spoke in them. Among the lawyers who prac- 
ticed before him were Benjamin Harrison and 
Thomas A. Hendricks, who became respect- 
ively President and Vice-President. 

Those Hoosiers who admired Gresham ar- 
dently were often less devotedly attached to 
Harrison, who lacked Gresham's warmth and 
charm. General Harrison was akin to the 
Covenanters who bore both Bible and sword 

14 



The Provincial American 

into battle. His eminence in the law was due to 
his deep learning in its history and philosophy. 
Short of stature, and without grace of person, 
— with a voice pitched rather high, — he was a 
remarkably interesting and persuasive speaker. 
If I may so put it, his political speeches were 
addressed as to a trial judge rather than to a 
jury, his appeal being to reason and not to pas- 
sion or prejudice. He could, in rapid flights of 
campaigning, speak to many audiences in a day 
without repeating himself. He was measured 
and urbane; [his discourses abounded in apt 
illustrations; he was never dull. He never 
stooped to pietistic clap-trap, or chanted the 
jaunty chauvinism that has so often caused the 
Hoosier stars to blink. 

Among the Democratic leaders of that pe- 
riod, Hendricks was one of the ablest, and a 
man of many attractive qualities. His dignity 
was always impressive, and his appearance sug- 
gested the statesman of an earlier time. It is 
one of immortality's harsh ironies that a man 
who was a gentleman, and who stood moreover 
pretty squarely for the policies that it pleased 
him to defend, should be published to the world 

IS 



The Provincial American 

in a bronze ef?Lgy in his own city as a bandy- 
legged and tottering tramp, in a frock coat that 
never was on sea or land. 

Joseph E. McDonald, a Senator in Congress, 
was held in affectionate regard by a wide con- 
stituency. He was an independent and vigorous 
character who never lost a certain raciness and 
tang. On my first timid venture into the fabled 
East I rode with him in a day-coach from 
Washington to New York on a slow train. At 
some point he saw a peddler of fried oysters on a 
station platform, alighted to make a purchase, 
and ate his luncheon quite democratically from 
the paper parcel in his car seat. He convoyed 
me across the ferry, asked where I expected to 
stop, and explained that he did not care for 
the European plan himself; he liked, he said, 
to have "full swing at a bill of fare." 

I used often to look upon the towering form 
of Daniel W. Voorhees, whom Sulgrove, an 
Indiana journalist with a gift for translating 
Macaulay into Hooslerese, had named "The 
Tall Sycamore of the Wabash." In a crowded 
hotel lobby I can still see him, cloaked and silk- 
hatted, the centre of the throng, and my strict 

i6 



The Provincial American 

upbringing in the antagonistic political faith did 
not diminish my admiration for his eloquence. 
Such were some of the characters who came 
and went in the streets of our provincial capital 
in those days. 

Ill 

In discussions under captions similar to mine 
it is often maintained that railways, telegraphs, 
telephones, and newspapers are so knitting us 
together, that soon we shall all be keyed to a 
metropolitan pitch. The proof adduced in sup- 
port of this is the most trivial, but it strikes 
me as wholly undesirable that we should all be 
ironed out and conventionalized. In the matter 
of dress, for example, the women of our town 
used to take their fashions from "Godey's" and 
"Peterson's" via Cincinnati; but now that we 
are only eighteen hours from New York, with 
a well-traveled path from the Wabash to Paris, 
my counselors among the elders declare that 
the tone of our society — if I may use so peril- 
ous a word — has changed little from our good 
old black alpaca days. The hobble skirt re- 
ceives prompt consideration in the "Main" 
street of any town, and is viewed with frank 

17 



The Provincial American 

curiosity, but it is only a one day's wonder. A 
lively runaway or the barbaric yawp of a new 
street fakir may dethrone it at any time. 

New York and Boston tailors solicit custom 
among us semi-annually, but nothing is so stub- 
born as our provincial distrust of fine raiment. I 
looked with awe, in my boyhood, upon a pair of 
mammoth blue-jeans trousers that were flung 
high from a flagstaff in the centre of Indianapo- 
lis, in derision of a Democratic candidate for 
governor, James D. Williams, who was addicted 
to the wearing of jeans. The Democrats saga- 
ciously accepted the challenge, made "honest 
blue jeans" the battle-cry, and defeated Ben- 
jamin Harrison, the "kid-glove" candidate of 
the Republicans. Harmless demagoguery this, 
or bad judgment on the part of the Republi- 
cans; and yet I dare say that if the sartorial 
issue should again become acute in our politics 
the banner of bifurcated jeans would triumph 
now as then. A Hoosier statesman who to-day 
occupies high office once explained to me his 
refusal of sugar for his coffee by remarking that 
he did n't like to waste sugar that way; he 
wanted to keep it for his lettuce! I do not urge 

i8 



The Provincial American 

sugared lettuce as symbolizing our higher 
provincialism, but mayonnaise may be poison 
to men who are nevertheless competent to 
construe and administer law. 

It is much more significant that we are all 
thinking about the same things at the same 
time, than that Farnam Street, Omaha, and 
Fifth Avenue, New York, should vibrate to the 
same shade of necktie. The distribution of 
periodicals is so managed that California and 
Maine cut the leaves of their magazines on the 
same day. Rural free delivery has hitched the 
farmer's wagon to the telegraph-office, and you 
can't buy his wife's butter now until he has 
scanned the produce market in his newspaper. 
This immediacy of contact does not alter the 
provincial point of view. New York and Texas, 
Oregon and Florida will continue to see things 
at different angles, and it is for the good of all of 
us that this is so. We have no national political, 
social, or intellectual centre. There is no "sea- 
son" in New York, as in London, during which 
all persons distinguished in any of these partic- 
ulars meet on common ground. Washington is 
our nearest approach to such a meeting-place, 

19 



The Provincial American 

but it offers only short vistas. We of the coun- 
try visit Boston for the symphony, or New- 
York for the opera, or Washington to view the 
government machine at work, but nowhere do 
interesting people representative of all our 
ninety millions ever assemble under one roof. 
All our capitals are, as Lowell put it, "frac- 
tional," and we shall hardly have a centre while 
our country is so nearly a continent. 

Nothing in our political system could be wiser 
than our dispersion into provinces. Sweep from 
the map the lines that divide the States and we 
should huddle like sheep suddenly deprived of 
the protection of known walls and flung upon 
the open prairie. State lines and local pride are 
in themselves a pledge of stability. The elas- 
ticity of our system makes possible a variety of 
governmental experiments by which the whole 
country profits. We should all rejoice that the 
parochial mind is so open, so eager, so earnest, 
so tolerant. Even the most buckramed con- 
servative on the eastern coast-line, scornful of 
the political follies of our far-lying provinces, 
must view with some interest the dallyings of 
Oregon with the Referendum, and of Des 

20 



The Provincial American 

Moines with the Commission System. If Mil- 
waukee wishes to try socialism, the rest of us 
need not complain. Democracy will cease to be 
democracy when all its problems are solved and 
everybody votes the same ticket. 

States that produce the most cranks are 
prodigal of the corn that pays the dividends on 
the railroads the cranks despise. Indiana's 
amiable feeling toward New York is not altered 
by her sister's rejection or acceptance of the 
direct primary, a benevolent device of noblest 
intention, under which, not long ago, in my own 
commonwealth, my fellow citizens expressed 
their distrust of me with unmistakable empha- 
sis. It is no great matter, but in open conven- 
tion also I have perished by the sword. No- 
thing can thwart the chastening hand of a 
righteous people. 

All passes ; humor alone is the touchstone of 
democracy. I search the newspapers daily for 
tidings of Kansas, and in the ways of Oklahoma 
I find delight. The Emporia "Gazette" is quite 
as patriotic as the Springfield "Republican" or 
the New York "Post," and to my own taste, 
far less depressing. I subscribed for a year to 

21 



The Provincial American 

the Charleston "News and Courier," and was 
saddened by the tameness of its sentiments; for 
I remember (it must have been in 1883) the 
shrinking horror with which I saw daily in the 
Indiana Republican organ a quotation from 
Wade Hampton to the effect that "these are 
the same principles for which Lee and Jackson 
fought four years on Virginia's soil." Most of 
us are entertained when Colonel Watterson 
rises to speak for Kentucky and invokes the 
star-eyed goddess. When we call the roll of the 
States, if Malvolio answer for any, let us suffer 
him in patience and rejoice in his yellow stock- 
ings. "God give them wisdom that have it; and 
those that are fools, let them use their talents." 
Every community has its dissenters, protest- 
ants, kickers, cranks; the more the merrier. My 
town has not lacked impressive examples, and 
I early formed a high resolve to strive for mem- 
bership in their execrated company. George W. 
Julian, — one of the noblest of Hoosiers, — 
who had been the Free-Soil candidate for Vice- 
President in 1852, a delegate to the first Re- 
publican convention, five times a member of 
Congress, a supporter of Greeley's candidacy, 

22 



The Provincial American 

and a Democrat in the consulship of Cleveland, 
was a familiar figure in our streets. In 1884 
I was dusting law-books in an office where mug- 
wumpery flourished, and where the iniquities of 
the tariff, Matthew Arnold's theological opin- 
ions, and the writings of Darwin, Spencer, and 
Huxley were discussed at intervals in the days' 
business. 

IV 

Many complain that we Americans give too 
much time to politics, but there could be no 
safer outlet for that "added drop of nervous 
fluid" which Colonel Higginson found in us and 
turned over to Matthew Arnold for further 
analysis. No doubt many voices will cry in the 
wilderness before we reach the promised land. 
A people which has been fed on the Bible is 
bound to hear the rumble of Pharaoh's chariots. 
It is in the blood to resent the oppressor's wrong, 
the proud man's contumely. The winter even- 
ings are long on the prairies, and we must always 
be fashioning a crown for Caesar or rehearsing 
his funeral rites. No great danger can ever seri- 
ously menace the nation so long as the remotest 
citizen clings to his faith that he is a part of the 

23 



The Provincial American 

governmental mechanism and can at any time 
throw it out of adjustment if it does n't run to 
suit him. He can go into the court-house and 
see the men he helped to place in office; or if 
they were chosen in spite of him, he pays his 
taxes just the same and waits for another 
chance to turn the rascals out. 

Mr. Bryce wrote; "This tendency to ac- 
quiescence and submission; this sense of the 
insignificance of individual effort, this belief 
that the affairs of men are swayed by large 
forces whose movement may be studied but 
cannot be turned, I have ventured to call the 
Fatalism of the Multitude." It is, I should say, 
one of the most encouraging phenomena of the 
score of years that has elapsed since Mr. 
Bryce's "American Commonwealth "appeared, 
that we have grown much less conscious of the 
crushing weight of the mass. It has been with 
something of a child's surprise in his ultimate 
successful manipulation of a toy whose mechan- 
ism had baffled him that we have begun to real- 
ize that, after all, the individual counts. The 
pressure of the mass will yet be felt, but in spite 
of its persistence there are abundant signs that 

24 



The Provincial American 

the individual is asserting himself more and 
more, and even the undeniable acceptance of 
collectivist ideas in many quarters helps to 
prove it. With all our faults and defaults of 
understanding, — populism, free silver, Cox- 
ey's army, and the rest of it, — we of the West 
have not done so badly. Be not impatient with 
the young man Absalom; the mule knows his 
way to the oak tree! 

Blaine lost Indiana in 1884; Bryan failed 
thrice to carry it. The campaign of 1910 in 
Indiana was remarkable for the stubbornness 
of "silent" voters, who listened respectfully to 
the orators but left the managers of both parties 
in the air as to their intentions. In the Indi- 
ana Democratic State Convention of 19 10 a 
gentleman was furiously hissed for ten minutes 
amid a scene of wildest tumult; but the cause 
he advocated won, and the ticket nominated in 
that memorable convention succeeded in No- 
vember. Within fifty years Ohio, Indiana, and 
Illinois have sent to Washington seven Presid- 
ents, elected for ten terms. Without discuss- 
ing the value of their public services it may be 
said that it has been an important demonstra- 

25 



The Provincial American 

tion to our Mid-Western people of the closeness 
of their ties with the nation, that so many men 
of their own soil have been chosen to the seat of 
the Presidents; and it is creditable to Maine 
and California that they have cheerfully ac- 
quiesced. In Lincoln the provincial American 
most nobly asserted himself, and any discussion 
of the value of provincial life and character in 
our politics may well begin and end in him. We 
have seen verily that 

"Fishers and choppers and ploughmen 
Shall constitute a state." 

Whitman, addressing Grant on his return 
from his world's tour, declared that it was not 
that the hero had walked "with kings with even 
pace the round world's promenade"; — 

" But that in foreign lands, in all thy walks with kings. 
Those prairie sovereigns of the West, Kansas, Missouri, 

Illinois, 
Ohio's, Indiana's millions, comrades, farmers, soldiers, 

all to the front. 
Invisibly with thee walking with kings with even pace 

the round world's promenade. 
Were all so justified." 

What we miss and what we lack who live in 
the provinces seem to me of little weight in the 

26 



The Provincial American 

scale against our compensations. We slouch, — 
we are deficient in the graces, — we are prone 
to boast, — and we lack in those fine reticences 
that mark the cultivated citizen of the metrop- 
olis. We like to talk, and we talk our problems 
out to a finish. Our conunonwealths rose in the 
ashes of the hunter's camp-fires, and we are all 
a great neighborhood, united in a conmion un- 
derstanding of what democracy is, and ani- 
mated by ideals of what we want it to be. That 
saving humor which is a philosophy of life 
flourishes amid the tall corn. We are old enough 
now — we of the West — to have built up in 
ourselves a species of wisdom, founded upon 
experience, which is a part of the continuing, 
unwritten law of democracy. We are less likely 
these days to "wobble right" than we are to 
stand fast or march forward like an army with 
banners. 

We provincials are immensely curious. Art, 
music, literature, politics — nothing that is of 
contemporaneous human interest is alien to us. 
If these things don't come to us, we go to them. 
We are more truly representative of the Ameri- 
can ideal than our metropolitan cousins, be- 

27 ^' 



The Provincial American 

cause (here I lay my head upon the block) we 
know more about, oh, so many things! We 
know vastly more about the United States, for 
one thing. We know what New York is think- 
ing before New York herself knows it, because 
we visit the metropolis to find out. Sleeping- 
cars have no terrors for us, and a man who has 
never been west of Philadelphia seems to us a 
singularly benighted being. Those of our West- 
em school-teachers who don't see Europe for 
three hundred dollars every summer get at least 
as far East as Concord, to be photographed 
"by the rude bridge that arched the flood." 
5 That fine austerity which the voluble West- 
erner finds so smothering on the Boston and 
New York express is lost utterly at Pittsburg. 
From gentlemen cruising in day-coaches — dull 
wights who advertise their personal sanitation 
and literacy by the toothbrush and fountain- 
pen planted sturdily in their upper left-hand 
waistcoat pockets — one may learn the most 
prodigious facts and the philosophy thereof. 
"Sit over, brother; there's hell to pay in the 
Balkans," remarks the gentleman who boarded 
the interurban at Peru or Connersville, and who 

28 



The Provincial American 

would just as lief discuss the Papacy or child- 
labor, if revolutions are not to your liking. 

In Boston a lady once expressed her surprise 
that I should be hastening home for Thanks- 
giving Day. This, she thought, was a New 
England festival. More recently I was asked 
by a Bostonian if I had ever heard of Paul 
Revere. Nothing is more delightful in us, I 
think, than our meekness before instruction. 
We strive to please; all we ask is "to be shown." 

Our greatest gain is in leisure and the oppor- 
tunity to ponder and brood. In all these thous- 
ands of country towns live alert and shrewd 
students of affairs. Where your New Yorker 
scans headlines as he "commutes" homeward, 
the villager reaches his own fireside without 
being shot through a tube, and sits down and 
reads his newspaper thoroughly. When he re- 
pairs to the drug-store to abuse or praise the 
powers that be, his wife reads the paper, too. A 
United States Senator from a Middle Western 
State, making a campaign for renomination 
preliminary to the primaries, warned the people 
in rural communities against the newspaper 
and periodical press with its scandals and here- 

29 



The Provincial American 

sies. "Wait quietly by your firesides, undis- 
turbed by these false teachings," he said in ef- 
fect; "then go to your primaries and vote as 
you have always voted." His opponent won by 
thirty thousand, — the amiable answer of the 
little red school-house. 

V 

A few days ago I visited again my native 
town. On the slope where I played as a child I 
listened in vain for the mourning bugle; but on 
the college campus a bronze tablet commemo- 
rative of those sons of Wabash who had fought 
in the mighty war quickened the old impres- 
sions. The college buildings wear a look of age 
in the gathering dusk. 

" Coldly, sadly descends 
The autumn evening. The field 
Strewn with its dank yellow drifts 
Of withered leaves, and the elms, ) 
Fade into dimness apace, 
Silent; hardly a shout 
From a few boys late at their play 1 " 

Brave airs of cityhood are apparent in the 
town, with its paved streets, fine hall and li- 
brary; and everywhere are wholesome life, com- 

30 



The Provincial American 

fort, and peace. The train is soon hurrying 
through gray fields and dark woodlands. Farm- 
houses are disclosed by glowing panes; lanterns 
flash fitfully where farmers are making all fast 
for the night. The city is reached as great fac- 
tories are discharging their laborers, and I pass 
from the station into a hurrying throng home- 
ward bound. Against the sky looms the dome 
of the capitol; the tall shaft of the soldiers' 
monument rises ahead of me down the long 
street and vanishes starward. Here where for- 
ests stood seventy-five years ago, in a State that 
has not yet attained its centenary, is realized 
much that man has sought through all the ages, 
— order, justice, and mercy, kindliness and 
good cheer. What we lack we seek, and what 
we strive for we shall gain. And of such is the 
kingdom of democracy.;. 



Edward Eggleston 



Edward Eggleston 

THE safest appeal of the defender of real- 
ism in fiction continues to be to geo- 
graphy. The old inquiry for the great American 
novel ignored.the persistent expansion by which 
the American States were multiplying. If the 
question had not ceased to be a burning issue, 
the earnest seeker might now be given pause by 
the recent appearance upon our maps of far- 
lying islands which must, in due course, add to 
the perplexity of any who wish to view Ameri- 
can life steadily or whole. If we should sud- 
denly vanish, leaving only a solitary Homer to 
chant us, we might possibly be celebrated ade- 
quately in a single epic, but as long as we con- 
tinue malleable and flexible we shall hardly be 
"begun, continued, and ended" in a single no- 
vel, drama, or poem. He were a much-enduring 
Ulysses who could touch once at all our ports. 
Even Walt Whitman, from the top of his omni- 
bus, could not see across the palms of Hawaii or 
the roofs of Manila; and yet we shall doubtless 

3S 



Edward Eggleston 

receive, in due course, bulletins from the Dia- 
lect Society with notes on colonial influences in 
American speech. Thus it is fair to assume that 
in the nature of things we shall rely more and 
more on realistic fiction for a federation of the 
scattered States of this decentralized and di- 
verse land of ours in a literature which shall be- 
come our most vivid social history. We cannot 
be condensed into one or a dozen finished pan- 
oramas; he who would know us hereafter must 
read us in the flashes of the kinetoscope. 

Important testimony to the efficacy of an 
honest and trustworthy realism has passed into 
the record in the work of Edward Eggleston, 
our pioneer provincial realist. Eggleston saw 
early the value of a local literature, and demon- 
strated that where it may be referred to general 
judgments, where it interprets the universal 
heart and conscience, an attentive audience 
may be found for it. It was his unusual fortune 
to have combined a personal experience at once 
varied and novel with a self-acquired education 
to which he gave the range and breadth of true 
cultivation, and, in special directions, the pre- 
cision of scholarship. The primary facts of life 

36 



Edward Eggleston 

as he knew them in the Indiana of his boyhood 
took deep hold upon his imagination, and the 
experiences of that period did much to shape 
his career. He knew the Hfe of the Ohio Valley 
at an interesting period of transition. He was 
not merely a spectator of striking social phe- 
nomena; but he might have said, with a degree 
of truth, quorum pars magna fui; for he was a 
representative of the saving remnant which 
stood for enlightenment in a dark day in a new 
land. Literature had not lacked servants in the 
years of his youth in the Ohio Valley. Many 
knew in those days the laurel madness ; but they 
went "searching with song the whole world 
through" with no appreciation of the material 
that lay ready to their hands at home. Their 
work drew no strength from the Western soil, 
but was the savorless fungus of a flabby senti- 
mentalism. It was left for Eggleston, with 
characteristic independence, to abandon fancy 
for reality. He never became a great novelist, 
and yet his homely stories of the early Hoosiers, 
preserving as they do the acrid bite of the per- 
simmon and the mellow flavor of the pawpaw, 
strengthen the whole case for a discerning and 

37 



Edward Eggleston 

faithful treatment of local life. What he saw 
will not be seen again, and when "The Hoosier 
Schoolmaster" and "Roxy" cease to entertain 
as fiction they will teach as history. 

The assumption in many quarters that "The 
Hoosier Schoolmaster" was in some measure 
autobiographical was always very distasteful to 
Dr. Eggleston, and he entered his denial forci- 
bly whenever occasion offered. His own life was 
sheltered, and he experienced none of the tradi- 
tional hardships of the self-made man. He 
knew at once the companionship of cultivated 
people and good books. His father, Joseph 
Cary Eggleston, who removed to Vevay, Indi- 
ana, from Virginia in 1832, was an alumnus of 
William and Mary College, and his mother's 
family, the Craigs, were well known in southern 
Indiana, where they were established as early 
as 1799. Joseph Cary Eggleston served in both 
houses of the Indiana Legislature, and was de- 
feated for Congress in the election of 1844. His 
cousin. Miles Cary Eggleston, was a prominent 
Indiana lawyer, and a judge in the early days, 
riding the long Whitewater circuit, which then 
extended through eastern Indiana from the 

38 



Edward Eggleston 

Ohio to the Michigan border. Edward Eggles- 
ton was born at Vevay, December lo, 1837. 
His boyhood horizons were widened by the re- 
moval of his family to New Albany and Madi- 
son, by a sojourn in the backwoods of Decatur 
County, and by thirteen months spent in 
Amelia County,^ Virginia, his father's former 
home. There he saw slavery practiced, and 
he ever afterward held anti-slavery opinions. 
There was much to interest an intelligent boy 
in the Ohio Valley of those years. Remini- 
scences of the frontiersmen who had redeemed 
the valley from savagery seasoned fireside talk 
with the spice of adventure; Clark's conquest 
had enrolled Vincennes in the list of battles of 
the Revolution; the battle of Tippecanoe was 
recent history; and the long rifle was still the 
inevitable accompaniment of the axe through- 
out a vast area of Hoosier wilderness. There 
was, however, in all the towns — Vevay, 
Brookville, Madison, Vincennes — a cultivated 
society, and before Edward Eggleston was born 
a remarkable group of scholars and adventurers 
had gathered about Robert Owen at New 
Harmony, in the lower Wabash, and while their 

39 



Edward Eggleston 

experiment in socialism was a dismal failure, 
they left nevertheless an impression which is 
still plainly traceable in that region. Abraham 
Lincoln lived for fourteen years (1816-30) in 
Spencer County, Indiana, and witnessed there 
the same procession of the Ohio's argosies 
which Eggleston watched later in Switzerland 
County. 

Edward Eggleston attended school for not 
more than eighteen months after his tenth year, 
and owing to ill health he never entered college, 
though his father, who died at thirty-four, had 
provided a scholarship for him. But he knew in 
his youth a woman of unusual gifts, Mrs. Julia 
Dumont, who conducted a dame school at 
Vevay. Mrs. Dumont is the most charming fig- 
ure in early Indiana history, and Dr. Eggles- 
ton's own portrait of her is at once a tribute 
and an acknowledgment. She wrote much in 
prose and verse, so that young Eggleston, be- 
sides the stimulating atmosphere of his own 
home, had before him in his formative years a 
writer of somewhat more than local reputation 
for his intimate counselor and teacher. His 
schooling continued to be desultory, but his 

40 



Edward Eggleston 

curiosity was insatiable, and there was, indeed, 
no period in which he was not an eager student. 
His life was rich in those minor felicities of for- 
tune which disclose pure gold to seeing eyes in 
any soil. He wrote once of the happy chance 
which brought him to a copy of Milton in a little 
house where he lodged for a night on the St. 
Croix River. His account of his first reading of 
"L'Allegro" is characteristic: "I read it in 
the freshness of the early morning, and in the 
freshness of early manhood, sitting by a win- 
dow embowered with honeysuckles dripping 
with dew, and overlooking the deep trap-rock 
dalles through which the dark, pine-stained 
waters of the -St. Croix River run swiftly. Just 
abreast of the little village the river opened for 
a space, and there were islands; and a raft, 
manned by two or three red-shirted men, was 
emerging from the gorge into the open water. 
Alternately reading 'L'AUegro' and looking oif 
at the poetic landscape, I Was lifted out of the 
sordid world into a region of imagination and 
creation. When, two or three hours later, I 
galloped along the road, here and there over- 
looking the dalles and river, the glory of a 

41 



Edward Eggleston 

nature above nature penetrated my being; and 
Milton's song of joy reverberated still in my 
thoughts." He was, it may be said, a natural 
etymologist, and by the time he reached man- 
hood he had acquired a reading knowledge of 
half a dozen languages. We have glimpses of 
him as chain-bearer for a surveying party in 
Minnesota; as walking across country toward 
Kansas, with an ambition to take a hand in the 
border troubles ; and then once more in Indiana, 
in his nineteenth year, as an itinerant Method- 
ist minister. He rode a four-week circuit with 
ten preaching places along the Ohio, his theo- 
logical training being described by his state- 
ment that in those days "Methodist preachers 
were educated by the old ones telling the young 
ones all they knew." He turned again to Min- 
nesota to escape malaria, preaching in remote 
villages to frontiersmen and Indians, and later 
he ministered to churches in St. Paul and else- 
where. He held, first at Chicago and later at 
New York, a number of editorial positions, and 
he occasionally contributed to juvenile periodi- 
cals; but these early writings were in no sense 
remarkable. 

42 



Edward Eggleston 

"The Hoosier Schoolmaster" appeared seri- 
ally in "Hearth and Home" in 1871. It was 
written in intervals of editorial work and was 
a tour de force for which the author expected 
so little publicity that he gave his characters 
the names of persons then living in Switzer- 
land and Decatur counties, Indiana, with no 
thought that the story would ever penetrate 
to its habitat. But the homely little tale, with 
all its crudities and imperfections, made a wide 
appeal. It was pirated at once in England; it 
was translated into French by "Madame 
Blanc," and was published in condensed form 
in the "Revue des Deux Mondes"; and later, 
with one of Mr. Aldrich's tales and other stories 
by Eggleston, in book form. It was translated 
into German and Danish also. "Le Maitre 
d'Ecole de Flat Creek" was the title as set over 
into French, and the Hoosier dialect suffered a 
sea-change into something rich and strange by 
its cruise into French waters. The story depicts 
Indiana in its darkest days. The State's illit- 
eracy as shown by the census of 1830 was 14.32 
per cent as against 5.54 in the neighboring 
State of Ohio. The "no lickin'j'^no leamin'" 

43 



Edward Eggleston 

period which Eggleston describes is thus a mat- 
ter of statistics; but even before he wrote the 
old order had changed and Caleb Mills, an 
alumnus of Dartmouth, had come from New 
England to lead the Hoosier out of darkness 
into the light of free schools. The story escaped 
the oblivion which overtakes most books for 
the young by reason of its freshness and novelty. 
It was, indeed, something more than a story for 
boys, though, like "Tom Sawyer" and "The 
Story of a Bad Boy," it is listed among books of 
permanent interest to youth. It shows no un- 
usual gift of invention; its incidents are simple 
and commonplace; but it daringly essayed a re- 
cord of local life in a new field, with the aid of a 
dialect of the people described, and thus became 
a humble but important pioneer in the develop- 
ment of American fiction. It is true that Bret 
Harte and Mark Twain had already widened 
the borders of our literary domain westward; 
and others, like Longstreet, had turned a few 
spadefuls of the rich Southern soil; but Harte 
was of the order of romancers, and Mark Twain 
was a humorist, while Longstreet, in his "Geor- 
gia Scenes," gives only the eccentric and fan- 

44 



Edward Eggleston 

tastic. Eggleston introduced the Hoosier at the 
bar of American literature in advance of the 
Creole of Mr. Cable or the negro of Mr. Page 
or Mr. Harris, or the mountaineer of Miss 
Murfree, or the delightful shore-folk of Miss 
Jewett's Maine. 

Several of Eggleston's later Hoosier stories 
are a valuable testimony to the spiritual unrest 
of the Ohio Valley pioneers. The early Hoosiers 
were a peculiarly isolated people, shut in by great 
woodlands. The news of the world reached 
them tardily; but they were thrilled by new 
versions of the Gospel brought to them by ad- 
venturous evangelists, whose eloquence made 
Jerusalem seem much nearer than their own 
national capital. Heated discussions between 
the sects supplied in those days an intellectual 
stimulus greater than that of politics. Questions 
shook the land which were unknown at West- 
minster and Rome; they are now well-nigh 
forgotten in the valley where they were once de- 
bated so fiercely. The Rev. Mr. Bosaw and his 
monotonously sung sermon in "The Hoosier 
Schoolmaster" are vouched for, and preaching 
of the same sort has been heard in Indiana at a 

45 



Edward Eggleston 

much later period than that of which Eggleston 
wrote. "The End of the World " (1872) describes 
vividly the extravagant belief of the Millerites, 
who, in 1842-43, found positive proof in the Book 
of Daniel that the world's doom was at hand. 
This tale shows little if any gain in constructive 
power over the first Hoosier story, and the same 
must be said of "The Circuit Rider," which 
portrays the devotion and sacrifice of the hardy 
evangelists of the Southwest among whom 
Eggleston had served. "Roxy" (1878) marks 
an advance; the story flows more easily, and the 
scrutiny of life is steadier. The scene is Vevay, 
and he contrasts pleasantly the Swiss and 
Hoosier villagers, and touches intimately the 
currents of local religious and political life. 
Eggleston shows here for the first time a ca- 
pacity for handling a long story. The characters 
are of firmer fibre; the note of human passion 
is deeper, and he communicates to his pages 
charmingly the atmosphere of his native vil- 
lage, — its quiet streets and pretty gardens, the 
sunny hills and the broad-flowing river. Vevay 
is again the scene in "The Hoosier Schoolboy" 
(1883), which is, however, no worthy successor 

46 



Edward Eggleston 

to "The Schoolmaster." The workmanship is 
infinitely superior to that of his first Hoosier 
tale, but he had lost touch, either with the soil 
(he had been away from Indiana for more than 
a decade), or with youth, or with both, and the 
story is flat and tame. After another long ab- 
sence he returned to the Western field in which 
he had been a pioneer, and wrote "The Gray- 
sons" (1888), a capital story of Illinois, in 
which Lincoln is a character. Here and in "The 
Faith Doctor," a novel of metropolitan life 
which followed three years later, the surer 
stroke of maturity is perceptible; and the short 
stories collected in "Duffles" include "Sister 
Tabea," a thoroughly artistic bit of work, which 
he once spoke of as being among the most sat- 
isfactory things he had written. 

A fault of all of Eggleston's earlier stories is 
their too serious insistence on the moral they 
carried — a resort to the Dickens method of 
including Divine Providence among the drama- 
tis personcs; but this is not surprising in one in 
whom there was, by his own confession, a life- 
long struggle "between the lover of literary art 

47 



Edward Eggleston 

and the religionist, the reformer, the philan- 
thropist, the man with a mission." There is 
little humor In these tales, — there was doubt- 
less little in the life itself, — but there is abund- 
ant good nature. In all he maintains consist- 
ently the point of view of the realist, his lapses 
being chiefly where the moralist has betrayed 
him. There are many pictures which denote his 
understanding of the illuminative value of 
homely incident in the life he then knew best; 
there are the spelling-school, the stirring relig- 
ious debates, the barbecue, the charivari, the 
infare, glimpses of "Tippecanoe and Tyler too," 
and the "Hard Cider" campaign. Those times 
rapidly receded; Indiana is one of the older 
States now, and but for Eggleston's tales there 
would be no trustworthy record of the period 
he describes. 

Lowell had made American dialect respect- 
able, and had used it as the vehicle for his polit- 
ical gospel; but Eggleston invoked the Hoosier 
lingua rustica to aid in the portrayal of a type. 
He did not, however, employ dialect with the 
minuteness of subsequent writers, notably Mr. 
James Whitcomb Riley; but the Southwestern 

48 



Edward Eggleston 

idiom impressed him, and his preface and notes 
in the later edition of "The Schoolmaster" are 
invaluable to the student. Dialect remains in 
Indiana, aselsewhere,largely a matter of observ- 
ation and opinion. There has never been a uni- 
form folk-speech peculiar to the people living 
within the borders of the State. The Hoosier 
dialect, so called, consisting more of elisions and 
vulgarized pronunciations than of true idiom, 
is spoken wherever the Scotch-Irish influence is 
perceptible in the West Central States, notably 
in the southern counties of Ohio, Indiana, and 
Illinois. It is not to be confounded with the 
cruder speech of the "poor-whitey," whose wild 
strain in the Hoosier blood was believed by 
Eggleston to be an inheritance of the English 
bond-slave. There were many vague and baf- 
fling elements in the Ohio Valley speech, but 
they passed before the specialists of the Dialect 
Society could note them. Mr. Riley's Hoosier 
is more sophisticated than Eggleston's, and 
thirty years of change lie between them, — years 
which wholly transformed the State, physically 
and socially. It is diverting to have Eggleston's 
own statement that the Hoosiers he knew in his 

49 



Edward Eggleston 

youth were wary of New England provincial- 
isms, and that his Virginia father threatened to 
inflict corporal punishment on his children " if 
they should ever give the peculiar vowel sound 
heard in some parts of New England in such 
words as 'roof and 'root.'" 

While Eggleston grew to manhood on a fron- 
tier which had been a great battle-ground, the 
mere adventurous aspects of this life did not 
'attract him when he sought subjects for his 
pen; but the culture-history of the people 
among whom his life fell interested him greatly, 
and he viewed events habitually with a critical 
eye. He found, however, that the evolution 
of society could not be treated satisfactorily 
in fiction, so he began, in 1880, while abroad, 
the researches in history which were to occupy 
him thereafter to the end of his life. His train- 
ing as a student of social forces had been super- 
ior to any that he could have obtained in the 
colleges accessible to him, for he had seen life in 
the raw; he had known, on the one hand, the 
vanishing frontiersmen who founded common- 
wealths around the hunters' camp-fires; and he 
had, on the other, witnessed the dawn of a new 
.50 



Edward Eggleston 

era which brought order and enlightenment. 
He thus became a delver in libraries only after 
he had scratched under the crust of life itself. 
While he turned first to the old seaboard colo- 
nies in pursuit of his new purpose, he brought 
to his research an actual knowledge of the be- 
ginnings of new States which he had gained in 
the open. He planned a history of life in the 
United States on new lines, his main idea be- 
ing to trace condition^ and movements to re- 
motest sources. He^ collected and studied his 
material for sixteen years before he published 
any, result of his labors beyond a few magazine 
papers. "The Beginnings of a Nation" (1896) 
and "The Transit of Civilization" (1901) are 
only part of the scheme as originally outlined, 
but they are complete as far as they go, and are 
of permanent interest and value. History was 
not to him a dusty lumber room, but a sunny 
street where people came and went in their hab- 
its as they lived; and thus, in a sense, he applied 
to history the realism of fiction. He pursued his 
task with scientific ardor and accuracy, but 
without fussiness or dullness. His occupations 
as novelist and editor had been a preparation 

SI 



Edward Eggleston 

for his later work, for it was the story quality 
that he sought in history, and he wrote with an 
editorial eye to what is salient and interesting. 
It is doubtful whether equal care has ever been 
given to the preparation of any other historical 
work in this country. The plan of the books is 
in itself admirable, and the exhaustive charac- 
ter of his researches is emphasized by copious 
notes, which are hardly less attractive than 
the text they amplify and strengthen. He ex- 
pressed himself with simple adequacy, with- 
out flourish, and with a nice economy of words; 
but he could, when he chose, throw grace and 
charm into his writing. He was, in the best 
sense, a humanist. He knew the use of books, 
but he vitalized them from a broad knowledge 
of life. He had been a minister, preaching a 
simple gospel, for he was never a theologian as 
the term is understood, but he enlisted zeal- 
ously in movements for the bettering of man- 
kind, and his influence was unfailingly whole- 
some and stimulating. 

His robust spirit was held in thrall by an in- 
valid body, and throughout his life his work was 
constantly interrupted by serious illnesses ; but 

52 



Edward Eggleston 

there was about him a certain blitheness; his 
outlook on life was cheerful and sanguine. He 
was tremendously in earnest in all his under- 
takings and accomplished first and last an im- 
mense amount of work, — preacher, author, 
editor, and laborious student, his industry was 
ceaseless. His tall figure, his fine head with 
its shock of white hair, caught the attention 
in any gathering. He was one of the most 
charming of talkers, leading lightly on from one 
topic to another. No one who ever heard his 
voice can forget its depth and resonance. Noth- 
ing in our American annals is more interesting 
or more remarkable than the rise of such men, 
who appear without warning in all manner of 
out-of-the-way places and succeed in precisely 
those fields which environment and opportun- 
ity seemingly conspire to fortify most strongly 
against them. Eggleston possessed in marked 
degree that self-reliance which Higginson calls 
the first requisite of a new literature, and 
through it he earned for himself a place of 
dignity and honor in American letters. 



A Provincial Capital 



A Provincial Capital 

THE Hoosier Is not so deeply wounded by 
the assumption in Eastern quarters that 
he is a wild man of the woods as by the amiable 
condescension of acquaintances at the sea- 
board, who tell him, when he mildly remon- 
strates, that his abnormal sensitiveness is 
provincial. This is, indeed, the hardest lot, to 
be called a "mudsill" and then rebuked for 
talking back! There are, however, several 
special insults to which the citizen of Indiana- 
polis is subjected, and these he resents with all 
the strength of his being. First among them is 
the proneness of many to confuse Indianapolis 
and Minneapolis. To the citizen of the Hoosier 
capital, Minneapolis seems a remote place, that 
can be reached only by passing through Chi- 
cago. Still another source of intense annoyance 
is the persistent fallacy that Indianapolis is 
situated on the Wabash River. There seems to 
be something funny about the name of this 
pleasant stream, — immortalized in late years 

57 



A Provincial Capital 

by a tuneful balladist, — which a large per- 
centage of the people of Indianapolis have 
never seen except from a car window. East of 
Pittsburg the wanderer from Hoosierdom ex- 
pects to be asked how things are on the Way- 
bosh, — a pronunciation which, by the way, is 
never heard at home. Still another grievance 
that has embittered the lives of Indianapoli- 
tans is the annoying mispronunciation of the 
name of their town by benighted outsiders. 
Rural Hoosiers, in fact, offend the ears of their 
city cousins with Indianopolis; but it is left 
usually for the Yankee visitor to say Injun- 
apolis, with a stress on Injun which points 
rather unnecessarily to the day of the war- 
whoop and scalp-dance. 

IndianapoUs — like Jerusalem, "a city at 
unity with itself," where the tribes assemble, 
and where the seat of judgment is established 
— is in every sense the capital of all the Hoo- 
siers. With the exception of Boston, it is the 
largest state capital in the country; and no 
other American city without water communi- 
cation is so large. It is distinguished primarily 
by the essentially American character of its 

58 



A Provincial Capital 

people. A considerable body of Germans con- 
tributed much first and last to its substantial 
growth, not only by the example of their fa- 
miliar industry and frugality, but in later 
years through their intelligent interest in all 
manner of civic improvement, in general edu- 
cation, and in music and art. Only in the past 
decade has there been any perceptible drift of 
undesirable immigrants from southeastern 
Europe to our city and the problems they 
create have been met promptly by wise agen- 
cies of social service. There was an influx of 
negroes at the close of the war, and the colored 
voters (aboutseventy-five hundred in 19 12) add 
considerably to our political perplexities. 

Indiana was admitted as a State in 18 16, and 
the General Assembly, sitting at Corydon in 
1 82 1, designated Indianapolis, then a settle- 
ment of struggling cabins, as the state capital. 
The name of the new town was not adopted 
without a struggle, Tecumseh, Suwarro, and 
Concord being proposed and supported, while 
the name finally chosen aroused the hostility of 
those who declared it unmelodious and etymo- 
logically abominable. It is of record that the 

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first mention of the name Indianapolis in the 
legislature caused great merriment. The town 
was laid out in broad streets, which were 
quickly adorned with shade trees that are an 
abiding testimony to the foresight of the found- 
ers. Alexander Ralston, one of the engineers 
employed in the first survey, had served in a 
similar capacity at Washington, and the diago- 
nal avenues and the generous breadth of the 
streets are suggestive of the national capital. 
The urban landscape lacks variety: the town is 
perfectly flat, and in old times the mud was in- 
tolerable, but the trees are a continuing glory. 
Central Indiana was not, in 1820, when the 
first cabin was built, a region of unalloyed de- 
light. The land was rich, but it was covered 
with heavy woods, and much of it was under 
water. Indians still roamed the forests, and the 
builder of the first cabin was killed by them. 
There were no roads, and White River, on 
whose eastern shore the town was built, was 
navigable only by the smallest craft. Mrs. 
Beecher, in "From Dawn to Daylight," de- 
scribed the region as it appeared in the forties : 
"It is a level stretch of land as far as the eye 

60 



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can reach, looking as if one good, thorough rain 
would transform it into an impassable morass. 
How the inhabitants contrive to get about in 
rainy weather, I can't imagine, unless they use 
stilts. The city itself has been redeemed from 
this slough, and presents quite a thriving ap- 
pearance, being very prettily laid out, with a 
number of fine buildings." Dr. Eggleston, 
writing in his novel "Roxy " of the same period, 
lays stress on the saffron hue of the commun- 
ity, the yellow mud seeming to cover all 
things animate and inanimate. 

But the founders possessed faith, courage, 
and hardihood, and "the capital in the woods" 
grew steadily. The pioneers were patriotic and 
religious ; their patriotism was, indeed, touched 
with the zeal of their religion. For many years 
before the Civil War a parade of the Sunday- 
school children of the city was the chief feature 
of every Fourth of July celebration. The found- 
ers labored from the first in the interest of 
morality and enlightenment. The young capi- 
tal was a converging point for a slender stream 
of population that bore in from New England, 
and a broader current that swept westward 

6i 



A Provincial Capital 

from the Middle and Southeastern States. 
There was no sectional feeling in those days. 
Many of the prominent settlers from Ken- 
tucky were Whigs, but a newcomer's church 
affiliation was of far more importance than his 
political belief. Membership in a church was a 
social recommendation in old times, but the 
importance of religion seemed to diminish as 
the town passed the two-hundred-thousand 
mark. Perhaps two hundred thousand is the 
dead-line — I hope no one will press me too 
hard to defend this suggestion — beyond which 
a community loses its pristine sensitiveness to 
benignant influences; but there was indubit- 
ably in the history of our capital a moment at 
which we became disagreeably conscious that 
we were no longer a few simple and well- 
meaning folk who made no social engagements 
that would interfere with Thursday night 
prayer meeting, but a corporation of which 
we were only unconsidered and unimportant 
members. 

The effect of the Civil War upon Indianapo- 
lis was immediate and far-reaching. It empha- 
sized, through the centralizing there of the 

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State's military energy, the fact that it was the 
capital city, — a fact which until that time 
had been accepted languidly by the average 
Hoosier countryman. The presence within the 
State of an aggressive body of sympathizers 
with Southern ideas directed attention through- 
out the country to the energy and resourceful- 
ness of Morton, the War Governor, who pursued 
the Hoosier Copperheads relentlessly, while 
raising a great army to send to the seat of war. 
Again, the intense political bitterness engen- 
dered by the war did not end with peace, or with 
the restoration of good feeling in neighboring 
States, but continued for twenty-five years 
more to be a source of political irritation, and, 
markedly at Indianapolis, a cause of social dif- 
ferentiation. In the minds of many, a Democrat 
was a Copperhead, and a Copperhead was an 
evil and odious thing. Referring to the slow 
death of this feeling, a veteran observer of af- 
fairs who had, moreover, supported Mr. Cleve- 
land's candidacy twice, recently said that he 
had never been able wholly to free himself from 
this prejudice. But the end really came in 1884, 
with the reaction against Blaine, which was 

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nowhere more significant of the flowering qf 
independence than at Indianapolis. 

Following the formative period, which may 
be said to have ended with the Civil War, came 
an era of prosperity in business, and even of 
splendor in social matters. Some handsome 
habitations had been built in the ante-bellum 
days, but they were at once surpassed by the 
homes which many citizens reared for them- 
selves in the seventies. These remain, as a 
group, the handsomest residences that have 
been built at any period in the history of the 
city. Life had been earnest in the early days, 
but it now became picturesque. The terms 
"aristocrats" and "first families" were heard 
in the community, and something of tradi- 
tional Southern ampleness and generosity crept 
into the way of life. No one said nouveau riche 
in those days; the first families were the real 
thing. No one denied it, and misfortune could 
not shake or destroy them. 

A panic is a stern teacher of humility, and 
the financial depression that fell upon the 
country in 1873 drove the lesson home remorse- 
lessly at Indianapolis. There had been nothing 

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equivocal about the boom. Western speculat- 
ors had not always had a fifty-year-old town to 
operate in, — the capital of a State, a natural 
railway centre, — no arid village in a hot 
prairie, but a real forest city that thundered 
mightily in the prospectus. There was no sud- 
den collapse; a brave effort was made to ward 
off the day of reckoning; but this only pro- 
longed the agony. Among the victims there 
was little whimpering. A thoroughbred has not 
proved his mettle until he has held up his head 
in defeat, and the Hoosier aristocrat went down 
with his flag flying. Those that had suffered 
the proud man's contumely then came forth to 
sneer. An old-fashioned butternut Democrat 
remarked, of a banker who failed, that "no 
wonder Blank busted when he drove to busi- 
ness in a carriage behind a nigger in uniform." 
The memory of the hard times lingered long at 
home and abroad. A town where credit could 
be so shaken was not, the Eastern insurance 
companies declared, a safe place for further 
investments; and in many quarters Indiana- 
polis was not forgiven until an honest, 
substantial growth had carried the lines of 

6s 



A Provincial Capital 

the city beyond the terra incognita of the 
boom's outer rim. 

Many of the striking characteristics of the 
true IndianapoHtan are attributable to those 
days, when the city's bounds were moved far 
countryward, to the end that the greatest pos- 
sible number of investors might enjoy the 
ownership of town lots. The signal effect of 
this dark time was to stimulate thrift and 
bring a new era of caution and conservatism; 
for there is a good deal of Scotch-Irish in the 
Hoosier, and he cannot be fooled twice with 
the same bait. During the period of depression 
the town lost its zest for gayety. It took its 
pleasures a little soberly; it was notorious as a 
town that welcomed theatrical attractions 
grudgingly, though this attitude must be re- 
ferred back also to the religious prejudices of 
the early comers. Your Indianapolitan who 
has personal knowledge of the panic, or who 
had listened to the story of it from one who 
weathered the storm, has never forgotten 
the discipline of the seventies : though he has 
reached the promised land, he still remembers 
the hot sun in the tyrant's brickyards. So con- 

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servatism became the city's rule of life. The 
panic of 1893 caused scarcely a ripple, and the 
typical Indianapolis business man to this day 
is one who minds his barometer carefully. 

Indianapolis became a city rather against 
its will. It liked its own way, and its way 
was slow; but when the calamity could no 
longer be averted, it had its trousers creased 
and its shoes polished, and accepted with 
good grace the fact that its population had 
reached two hundred thousand, and that it 
had crept to a place comfortably near the top 
in the list of bank clearances. A man who left 
Indianapolis in 1885, returned in 1912 — the 
Indianapolitan, like the cat in the ballad, al- 
ways comes back; he cannot successfully be 
transplanted — to find himself a stranger in a 
strange city. Once he knew all the people who 
rode in chaises; but on his return he found new 
people flying about in automobiles that cost 
more than any but the most prosperous citizen 
earned in the horse-car days ; once he had been 
able to discuss current topics with a passing 
friend in the middle of Washington Street; 
now he must duck and dive, and keep an eye 

67 



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on the policeman if he would make a safe 
crossing. He is asked to luncheon at a club; in 
the old days there were no clubs, or they were 
looked on as iniquitous things; he is carried 
off to inspect factories which are the largest 
of their kind in the world. At the railroad yards 
he watches the loading of machinery for ship- 
ment to Russia and Chili, and he is driven 
over asphalt streets to parks that had not 
been dreamed of before his term of exile. 

Manufacturing is the great business of the 
city, still sootily advertised on the local coun- 
tenance in spite of heroic efforts to enforce 
smoke-abatement ordinances. There are nearly 
two thousand establishments within its limits 
where manufacturing in some form is carried 
on. Many of these rose in the day of natural 
gas, and it was predicted that when the gas had 
been exhausted the city would lose them; but 
the number has increased steadily despite the 
failure of the gas supply. There are abundant 
coal-fields within the State, so that the ques- 
tion of fuel will not soon be troublesome. The 
city enjoys, also, the benefits to be derived 
from the numerous manufactories in other 

68 



A Provincial Capital 

towns of central Indiana, many of which main- 
tain administrative offices there. It is not only 
a good place in which to make things, but a 
point from which many things may be sold to 
advantage. Jobbing flourished even before 
manufacturing attained its present propor- 
tions. The jobbers have given the city an envi- 
able reputation for enterprise and fair dealing. 
When you ask an Indianapolis jobber whether 
the propinquity of St. Louis, Cincinnati, Chi- 
cago, and Cleveland is not against him, he 
answers that he meets his competitors daily in 
every part of the country and is not afraid of 
them. 

Indianapolis was long a place of industry, 
thrift, and comfort, where the simple life was 
not only possible but necessary. Its social en- 
tertainments were of the tamest sort, and the 
change in this respect has come only within a 
few years, — with the great wave of growth 
and prosperity that has wrought a new Indiana- 
polis from the old. If left to itself, the old 
Indianapolis would never have known a horse 
show or a carnival, — ^would never have strewn 
itself with confetti, or boasted the greatest 

69 



A Provincial Capital 

automobile speedway in the world; but the 
invading time-spirit has rapidly destroyed the 
walls of the city of tradition. Business men no 
longer go home to dinner at twelve o'clock and 
take a nap before returning to work; and the 
old amiable habit of visiting for an hour in an 
office where ten minutes of business was to be 
transacted has passed. A town is at last a city 
when sociability has been squeezed out of 
business and appointments are arranged a day 
in advance by telephone. 

The distinguishing quality of Indianapolis 
continues, however, to be its simple domestic- 
ity. The people are home-loving and home- 
keeping. In the early days, when the town was 
a rude capital in the wilderness, the citizens 
stayed at home perforce; and when the railroad 
reached them they did not take readily to 
travel. A trip to New York is still a much more 
serious event, considered from Indianapolis, 
than from Denver or Kansas City. It was an 
Omaha young man who was so little appalled 
by distance that, having an express frank, he 
formed the habit of sending his laundry work 
to New York, to assure a certain finish to his 

70 



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linen that was unattainable at home. The more 
the Hoosier travels, the more he likes his own 
town. Only a little while ago an Indianapolis 
man who had been in New York for a week 
went to the theatre and saw there a fellow- 
townsman who had just arrived. He hurried 
around to greet him at the end of the first act. 
"Tell me," he exclaimed, "how is everything 
in old Indianapolis?" 

The Hoosiers assemble at Indianapolis in 
great throngs with slight excuse. In addition 
to the steam railroads that radiate in every 
direction interurban traction lines have lately 
knit new communities into sympathetic rela- 
tionship with the capital. One may see the 
real Hoosier in the traction station, — and an 
ironed-out, brushed and combed Hoosier he is 
found to be. You may read the names of all the 
surrounding towns on the big interurban cars 
that mingle with the local traction traffic. 
They bring men whose errand is to buy or sell, 
or who come to play golf on the free course at 
Riverside Park, or on the private grounds of 
the Country Club. The country women join 
their sisters of the city in attacks upon the bar- 

71 



A Provincial Capital 

gain counters. These cars disfigure the streets, 
but no one has made serious protest, for are 
not the Hoosiers welcome to their capital, no 
matter how or when they visit it; and is not 
this free intercourse, as the phrase has it, "a 
good thing for Indianapolis"? This contact 
between town and country tends to stimulate 
a state feeling, and as the capital grows this 
intimacy will have an increasing value. 

There is something neighborly and cozy 
about Indianapolis. The man across the street 
or next door will share any good thing he has 
with you, whether it be a cure for rheumatism, 
a new book, or the garden hose. It is a town 
where doing as one likes is not a mere possibil- 
ity, but an inherent right. The woman of Indi- 
anapolis is not afraid to venture abroad with 
her market-basket, albeit she may carry it in 
an automobile. The public market at Indiana- 
polis is an ancient and honorable institution, 
and there is no shame but much honor in being 
seen there in conversation with the farmer 
and the gardener or the seller of herbs, in the 
early hours of the morning. The market is so 
thoroughly established in public affection that 

72 



A Provincial Capital 

the society reporter walks its aisles in pursuit 
of news. The true Indianapolis housewife goes 
to market; the mere resident of the city orders 
by telephone, and meekly accepts what the 
grocer has to offer; and herein lies a differ- 
ence that is not half so superficial as it may 
Sound, for at heart the people who are related 
to the history and tradition of Indianapolis 
are simple and frugal, and if they read Emerson 
and Browning by the evening lamp, they know 
no reason why they should not distinguish, 
the next morning, between the yellow-legged 
chicken offered by the farmer's wife at the 
market and frozen fowls of doubtful authenticity 
that have been held for a season in cold storage. 
The narrow margin between the great par- 
ties in Indiana has made the capital a centre of 
incessant political activity. The geographical 
position of the city has also contributed to this, 
the state leaders and managers being constant 
visitors. Every second man you meet is a 
statesman ; every third man is an orator. The 
largest social club in Indiana exacts a promise 
of fidelity to the Republican party, — or did, 
until insurgency made the close scrutiny of the 

73 



A Provincial Capital 

members' partisanship Impolite if not impol- 
itic! — and within its portals chances and 
changes of men and measures are discussed 
tirelessly. And the pilgrim is not bored with 
local affairs; not a bit of it! Municipal dangers 
do not trouble the Indianapolitan; his eye is 
on the White House, not the town hall. The 
presence in the city through many years of 
men of national prominence — Morton, Har- 
rison, Hendricks, McDonald, English, Gresham, 
Turpie, of the old order, and Fairbanks, Kern, 
Beveridge, and Marshall in recent years — has 
kept Indianapolis to the fore as a political 
centre. Geography is an important factor in 
the distribution of favors by state conven- 
tions. Rivalry between the smaller towns is 
not so marked as their united stand against 
the capital, though this feeling seems to be 
abating. The city has had, at least twice, 
both United States Senators; but governors 
have usually been summoned from the coun- 
try. Harrison was defeated for governor by a 
farmer (1876), in a heated campaign, in which 
"Kid-Gloved Harrison" was held up to deri- 
sion by the adherents of "Blue- Jeans Will- 

74 



A Provincial Capital 

iams." And again, in 1880, a similar situation 
was presented in the contest for the same office 
between Albert G. Porter and Franklin Land- 
ers, both of Indianapolis, though Landers stood 
ruggedly for the "blue jeans" idea. 

The high tide of political interest was 
reached in the summer and fall of 1888, when 
Harrison made his campaign for the presidency, 
largely from his own doorstep. Marion County, 
of which Indianapolis is the seat, was for many 
years Republican; but neither county nor city 
has lately been "safely" Democratic or Re- 
publican. At the city election held in October, 
1904, a Democrat was elected mayor over a 
Republican candidate who had been renomi- 
nated in a "snap" convention, in the face of 
aggressive opposition within his party. The 
issue was tautly drawn between corruption 
and vice on the one hand and law and order 
on the other. An independent candidate, who 
had also the Prohibition support, received 
over five thousand votes. 

The difficulties in the way of securing in- 
telligent and honest city government have, 
however, multiplied with the growth of the 

75 



A Provincial Capital 

city. The American municipal problem is 
as acutely presented in Indianapolis as else- 
where. The more prosperous a city the less 
time have the beneficiaries of its prosperity for 
self-government. It is much simpler to allow 
politicians of gross incapacity and leagued with 
vice to levy taxes and expend the income ac- 
cording to the devices and desires of their own 
hearts and pockets than to find reputable and 
patriotic citizens to administer the business. 
Here as elsewhere the party system is indubit- 
ably at the root of the evil. It happens, indeed, 
that Indianapolis is even more the victim of 
partisanship than other cities of approxim- 
ately the same size for the reason that both 
the old political organizations feel that the loss 
of the city at a municipal election jeopardizes 
the chances of success in general elections. 
Just what effect the tariff and other national 
issues have upon street cleaning and the polic- 
ing of a city has never been explained. It is 
interesting to note that the park board, whose 
members serve without pay, has been, since 
the adoption of the city charter, a commission 
of high intelligence and unassailable integrity. 

76 



A Provincial Capital 

The standard having been so established no 
mayor is likely soon to venture to consign this 
board's important and responsible functions to 
the common type of city hall hangers-on. 

It is one of the most maddening of the anom- 
alies of American life that municipal pride 
should exhaust its energy in the exploitation 
of factory sites and the strident advertisement 
of the number of freight cars handled in rail- 
road yards, while the municipal corporation 
itself is turned over to any band of charlatans 
and buccaneers that may seek to capture it. In 
191 1-12 the municipal government had reached 
the lowest ebb in the city's history. It had be- 
come so preposterous and improvement was so 
imperatively demanded that many citizens, 
both as individuals and in organizations, began 
to interest themselves in plans for reform. The 
hope here as elsewhere seems to be in the young 
men, particularly of the college type, who find 
in local government a fine exercise for their 
talents and zeal. 

In this connection it may be said that the 
Indianapolis public schools owe their marked 
excellence and efficiency to their complete di- 



A Provincial Capital 

vorcement from political influence. This has 
not only assured the public an intelligent and 
honest expenditure of school funds, but it has 
created a corps spirit among the city's teach- 
ers, admirable in itself, and tending to cumu- 
lative benefits not yet realized. The superin- 
tendent of schools has absolute power of 
appointment, and he is accountable only to the 
commissioners, and they in turn are entirely 
independent of the mayor and other city of- 
ficers. Positions on the school board are not 
sought by politicians. The incumbents serve 
without pay, and the public evince a disposi- 
tion to find good men and to keep them in office. 
The soldiers' monument at Indianapolis is 
a testimony to the deep impression made by 
the Civil War on the people of the State. The 
monument is to Indianapolis what the Wash- 
ington Monument is to the national capital. 
The incoming traveler beholds it afar, and 
within the city it is almost an inescapable 
thing, though with the advent of the sky- 
scraper it is rapidly losing its fine dignity as 
the chief incident of the skyline. It stands in a 
circular plaza that was originally a park known 

78 



A Provincial Capital 

as the "Governor's Circle." This was long ago 
abandoned as a site for the governor's mansion, 
but It offered an ideal spot for a monument to 
Indiana soldiers, when, in 1887, the General 
Assembly authorized its construction. The 
height of the monument from the street level 
is two hundred and eighty-four feet and it 
stands on a stone terrace one hundred and ten 
feet in diameter. The shaft is crowned by a 
statue of Victory thirty-eight feet high. It is 
built throughout of Indiana limestone. The 
fountains at the base, the heroic sculptured 
groups "War" and "Peace," and the bronze 
astragals representing the army and navy, are 
admirable In design and execution. The whole 
effect Is one of poetic beauty and power. 
There Is nothing cheap, tawdry, or common- 
place in this magnificent tribute of Indiana to 
her soldiers. The monument is a memorial of 
the soldiers of all the wars in which Indiana has 
participated. The veterans of the Civil War 
protested against this, and the controversy 
was long and bitter; but the capture of Vln- 
cennes from the British In 1779 Is rnade to link 
Indiana to the war of the Revolution; and the 

79 



A Provincial Capital 

battle of Tippecanoe, to the war of 1812. The 
war with Mexico, and seven thousand four 
hundred men enlisted for the Spanish War are 
likewise remembered. It is, however, the war 
of the Rebellion, whose effect on the social and 
political life of Indiana was so tremendous, 
that gives the monument its great cause for 
being. The white male population of Indiana 
in i860 was 693,348; the totaL enlistment of 
soldiers during the ensuing years of war was 
210,497! The names of these men lie safe for 
posterity in the base of the gray shaft. 

The newspaper paragrapher has in recent 
years amused himself at the expense of Indi- 
ana as a literary centre, but Indianapolis as a 
village boasted writers of at least local repu- 
tation, and Coggeshall's "Poets and Poetry 
of the West" (1867) attributes half a dozen 
poets to the Hoosier capital. The Indianapolis 
press has from the beginning been distinguished 
by enterprise and decency, and in several in- 
stances by vigorous independence. The literary 
quality of the city's newspapers was high, even 
in the early days, and the standard has not been 
lowered. Poets with cloaks and canes were, in 

80 



A Provincial Capital 

the eighties, pretty prevalent in Market Street 
near the post-ofEce, the habitat then of most 
of the newspapers. The poets read their verses 
to one another and cursed the magazines. A 
reporter for one of the papers, who had scored 
the triumph of a poem in the "Atlantic," was 
a man of mark among the guild for years. The 
local wits stabbed the fledgeling bards with 
their gentle ironies. A young woman of social 
prominence printed some verses in an Indian- 
apolis newspaper, and one of her acquaint- 
ances, when asked for his opinion of them, 
said they were creditable and ought to be set 
to music — and played as an instrumental 
piece! The wide popularity attained by Mr. 
James Whitcomb Riley quickened the literary 
impulse, and the fame of his elders and pre- 
decessors suffered severely from the fact that 
he did not belong to the cloaked brigade. 
General Lew Wallace never lived at Indiana- 
polis save for a few years in boyhood, while 
his father was governor, though toward the 
end of his life he spent his winters there. 
Maurice Thompson's muse scorned "paven 
ground," and he was little known at the capital 

8i 



A Provincial Capital 

even during his term of office as state geologist, 
when he came to town frequently from his home 
in Crawfordsville. Mr. Booth Tarklngton, the 
most cosmopolitan of Hooslers, has lifted the 
banner anew for a younger generation through 
his successful essays in fiction and the drama. 
If you do not In this provincial capital meet 
an author at every corner, you are at least never 
safe from men and women who read books. In 
many Missouri River towns a stranger must 
still listen to the old wail against the railroads; 
at Indianapolis he must listen to politics, and 
possibly some one will ask his opinion of a son- 
net, just as though it were a cigar. A judge of 
the United States Court sitting at Indianapo- 
lis, was in the habit of locking the door of his 
private office and reading Horace to visiting 
attorneys. There was, indeed, a time — consule 
Planco — when most of the federal officeholders 
at Indianapolis were bookish men. Three suc- 
cessive clerks of the federal courts were schol- 
ars; the pension agent was an enthusiastic 
Shakespearean; the district attorney was a 
poet; and the master of chancery a man of 
varied learning, who was so excellent a talker 

82 



A Provincial Capital 

that, when he met Lord Chief Justice Coleridge 
abroad, the English jurist took the Hoosier 
with him on circuit, and wrote to the justice of 
the American Supreme Court who had intro- 
duced them, to "send me another man as 
good." 

It is possible for a community which may 
otherwise lack a true local spirit to be unified 
through the possession of a sense of humor; and 
even in periods of financial depression the town 
has always enjoyed the saving grace of a cheer- 
ful, centralized intelligence. The first tavern 
philosophers stood for this, and the courts of 
the early times were enlivened by it, — as wit- 
ness all Western chronicles. The Middle West- 
ern people are preeminently humorous, particu- 
larly those of the Southern strain from which 
Lincoln sprang. During all the years that the 
Hoosier suffered the reproach of the outside 
world, the citizen of the capital never failed to 
appreciate the joke when it was on himself; and 
looking forth from the wicket of the city gate, 
he was still more keenly appreciative when it 
was "on" his neighbors. The Hoosier is a 
natural story-teller; he relishes a joke, and to 

83 



A Provincial Capital 

talk is his ideal of social enjoyment. This was 
true of the early Hoosier, and it is true to-day 
of his successor at the capital. The Monday 
night meetings of the Indianapolis Literary 
Club — organized in 1877 and with a continu- 
ous existence to this time — have been marked 
by racy talk. The original members are nearly 
all gone; but the sayings of a group of them — 
the stiletto thrusts of Fishback, the lawyer; the 
droll inadvertences of Livingston Rowland, the 
judge; and the inimitable anecdotes of Myron 
Reed, soldier and preacher — crept beyond the 
club's walls and became town property. This 
club is old and well seasoned. It is exclusive — 
so much so that one of its luminaries remarked 
that if all of Its members should be expelled for 
any reason, none could hope to be readmitted. 
It has entertained but four pilgrims from the 
outer world, — Matthew Arnold, Dean Farrar, 
Joseph Parker, and John Fiske. 

The Hoosier capital has always been sus- 
ceptible to the charms of oratory. Most of the 
great lecturers in the golden age of the Ameri- 
can lyceum were welcomed cordially at Indiana- 
polis. The Indianapolis pulpit has been served 

84 



A Provincial Capital 

by many able men, and great store is still set by 
preaching. When Henry Ward Beecher min- 
istered to the congregation of the Second Pres- 
byterian Church (1838-46), his superior talents 
were recognized and appreciated. He gave a 
series of seven lectures to the young men of the 
city during the winter of 1843-44, on such sub- 
jects as "Industry," "Gamblers and Gam- 
bling," "Popular Amusements," etc., which 
were published at Indianapolis immediately, in 
response to an urgent request signed by thir- 
teen prominent citizens. 

The women of Indianapolis have aided 
greatly in fashioning the city into an enlight- 
ened community. The wives and daughters of 
the founders were often women of cultivation, 
and much in the character of the city to-day is 
plainly traceable to their work and example. 
During the Civil War they did valiant service in 
caring for the Indiana soldier. They built for 
themselves in 1888 a building — the Propy- 
Iseum — where many clubs meet; and they were 
long the mainstay of the Indianapolis Art Asso- 
ciation, which, by a generous and unexpected 
bequest a few years ago, now boasts a perma- 

85 



A Provincial Capital 

nent museum and school. It is worth remem- 
bering that the first woman's club — in the 
West, at least — was organized on Hoosier soil 
— at Robert Owen's New Harmony — in 1859. 
The women of the Hoosier capital have ad- 
dressed themselves zealously in many organiza- 
tions to the study of all subjects related to good 
government. The apathy bred of commercial 
success that has dulled the civic consciousness 
of their fathers and husbands and brothers has 
had the effect of stimulating their curiosity and 
quickening their energies along lines of political 
and social development. 

I have been retouching here and there this 
paper as it was written ten years ago. In the 
intervening decade the population of Indiana- 
polis has increased 38.1 per cent, jumping from 
169,161 to 233,650, and passing both Provid- 
ence and Louisville. Something of the South- 
ern languor that once seemed so charming — 
something of what the plodding citizens of the 
mule-car days liked to call "atmosphere" — 
has passed. And yet the changes are, after all, 
chiefly such as address the eye rather than the 

86 



A Provincial Capital 

spirit. There are more people, but there are 
more good people! The coming of the army- 
post has widened our poHtical and social hori- 
zons. The building of the Homeric speedway 
that has caused us to be written large on the 
world's pink sporting pages, and the invasion of 
foreigners, have not seriously disturbed the old 
neighborliness, kindliness, and homely cheer. 
Elsewhere in these pages I mention the pass- 
ing of the church as the bulwark behind which 
this community had intrenched itself; and yet 
much the same spirituality that was once ob- 
servable endures, though known by new names. 
The old virtues must still be dominant, for 
visitors sensitive to such impressions seem to be 
conscious of their existence. Only to-day Mr. 
Arnold Bennett, discoursing of America in 
"Harper's Magazine," finds here exactly the 
things whose passing it is the local fashion to 
deplore. In our maple-lined streets he was 
struck by the number of detached houses, each 
with its own garden. He found in these homes 
"the expression of a race incapable of looking 
foolish, of being giddy, of running to extremes." 
And I am cheered by his declaration of a belief 

87 



A Provincial Capital 

that In some of the comfortable parlors of our 
quiet thoroughfares there are "minor million- 
aires who wonder whether, outsoaring the am- 
bition of a bit of property, they would be justi- 
fied in creeping downtown and buying a cheap 
automobile!" And I had been afraid that every 
man among us with anything tangible enough 
to mortgage had undertaken the task of adver- 
tising one of our chief industries by moderniz- 
ing Ezeklel's vision of the wheels ! 

It is cheering to know that this pilgrim from 
the Five Towns thought us worthy of a place in 
his odyssey, and that his snapshots reveal so 
much of what my accustomed eyes sometimes 
fail to see. I am glad to be reestablished by so 
penetrating an observer in my old faith that 
there are planted here on the West Fork of 
White River some of the roots of "essential 
America." If we are not typical Americans 
we offer the nearest approach to it that I, in 
my incurable provincialism, know where to lay 
hands on. 



Experience and the Calendar 



Experience and the Calendar 

USELESS, quite useless, young man," said 
the doctor, pursing his lips; and as he has 
a nice feeling for climax, he slapped the reins on 
Dobbin's broad back and placidly drove away. 

Beneath that flapping gray hat his wrinkled 
face was unusually severe. His eyes really 
seemed to flash resentment through his green 
spectacles. The doctor's remark related to my 
manipulation of a new rose-sprayer which I had 
purchased this morning at the village hardware 
store, and was directing against the pests on 
my crimson ramblers when he paused to tell me 
that he had tried that identical device last year 
and found it worthless. As his shabby old phae- 
ton rounded the corner, I turned the sprayer 
over to my young undergraduate friend Septi- 
mus, and hurried in to set down a few truths 
about the doctor. 

He is, as you may already have guessed, the 
venerable Doctor Experience, of the well- 
known university that bears his name. He is 

91 



Experience and the Calendar 

a person of quality and distinction, and the 
most quoted of all the authorities on life and 
conduct. How empty the day would be in 
which we did not hear some one say, "Experi- 
ence has taught me — " In the University of 
Experience the Doctor fills all the chairs; and 
all his utterances, one may say, are ex cathedra. 
He is as respectable for purposes of quotation 
as Thomas, a Kempis or Benjamin Franklin. 
We really imagine — we who are alumni of the 
old doctor's ivy-mantled knowledge-house, and 
who recall the austerity of his curriculum and 
the frugality of Sunday evening tea at his 
table — ^that his own courses were immensely 
profitable to us. We remember well how he 
warned us against yielding to the persuasions 
of the world, the flesh, and the devil, illustrating 
his points with anecdotes from his own long and 
honorable career. He used to weep over us, too, 
in a fashion somewhat dispiriting; but we loved 
him, and sometimes as we sit in the winter twi- 
light thinking of the days that are no more, we 
recall him in a mood of affection and regret, and 
do not mind at all that cheerless motto in the 
seal of the university corporation, "Experientia 

92 



Experience and the Calendar 

docet stultos^'* to which he invariably calls at- 
tention after morning prayers. 

"My young friends," he says, "I hope and 
trust that my words may be the means of saving 
you from much of the heartache and sorrow of 
this world. When I was young — " 

This phrase is the widely accepted signal for 
shuffling the feet and looking bored. We turn 
away from the benign doctor at his reading- 
desk, fumbling at that oft-repeated lecture 
which our fathers and grandfathers remember 
and quote, — we turn our gaze to the open win- 
dows and the sunlight. The philosophy of life 
is in process of making out there, — a new phil- 
osophy for every hour, with infinite spirit and 
color, and anon we hear bugles crying across the 
hills of our dreams. "When I was young!" If 
we were not the politest imaginable body of 
students, — we who take Doctor Experience's 
course because it is (I blush at the confession) 
a "snap," — we should all be out of the window 
and over the hills and far away. 

The great weakness of Experience as a 
teacher lies in the fact that truth is so alterable. 
We have hardly realized how utterly the snows 

93. 



Experience and the Calendar 

and roses of yesteryear vanish before the amiable 
book agent points out to us the obsolete charac- 
ter of our most prized encyclopaedia. All books 
should be purchased with a view to their utility 
in lifting the baby's chin a proper distance 
above the breakfast table; for, quite likely, this 
will soon become their sole office in the house- 
hold. Within a fifteen-minute walk of the win- 
dow by which I write lives a man who rejects 
utterly the idea that the world is round, and he 
is by no means a fool. He is a far more inter- 
esting person, I dare say, than Copernicus or 
Galileo ever was; and his strawberries are the 
earliest and the best produced in our township. 
Truth, let us say, is a continuing matter, and 
hope springeth eternal. This is where I parted 
company with the revered doctor long ago. His 
inability to catch bass in the creek is n't going 
to keep me at home to-morrow morning. For 
all I care, he may sit on his veranda and talk 
himself hoarse to his old friend, Professor Kill- 
joy, whose gum shoes and ear-muffs are a feat- 
ure of our village landscape. 

When you and I, my brother, are called on to 
address the young, how blithely we congratu- 

94 



Experience and the Calendar 

late our hearers upon being the inheritors of the 
wisdom of all the ages. This is one of the great- 
est of fallacies. The twentieth century dawned 
upon American States that were bored by the 
very thought of the Constitution, and willing 
to forget that venerable document at least long 
enough to experiment with the Initiative, the 
Referendum, and the Recall. What some Lord 
Chief Justice announced as sound law a hun- 
dred years ago means nothing to common- 
wealths that have risen since the motor-car 
began honking In the highway. On a starry 
night in the spring of 19 12 a veteran sea-cap- 
tain, with wireless warnings buttoned under his 
pea-jacket, sent the finest ship in the world 
smashing into an iceberg. All the safety de- 
vices known to railroading cannot prevent some 
engineer from occasionally trying the experi- 
ment of running two trains on a single track. 
With the full weight of the experience of a 
thousand years against him the teller begins to 
transfer the bank's money to his own pocket, 
knowing well the hazard and the penalty. 

We pretend to invoke dear old Experience as 
though he were a god, fondly imagining that an 

9S 



Experience and the Calendar 

honest impulse demands that we appeal to him 
as an arbiter. But when we have submitted our 
case and listened to his verdict, we express our 
thanks and go away and do exactly as we please. 
We all carry our troubles to the friends whose 
sympathy we know outweighs their wisdom. 
We want them to pat us on the back and tell 
us that we are doing exactly right. If by any 
chance they are bold enough to give us an 
honest judgment based on real convictions, we 
depart with a grievance, our confidence shaken. 
We lean upon our friends, to be sure; but we 
rely upon them to bail us out after the forts of 
folly have crashed about our ears and we pine 
in the donjon, rather than on their advice that 
might possibly have preserved us on the right 
side of the barricade. And I may note here, 
that of all the offices that man may undertake, 
that of the frank friend is the most thankless. 
The frank friend ! It is he who told you yester- 
day that you were looking wretchedly ill. Doc- 
tor Experience had warned him; and he felt 
it to be his duty to stop you in your headlong 
plunge. To-morrow he will drop in to tell you 
in gentle terms that your latest poem is — 

96 



Experience and the Calendar 

well, he hates to say it — but he fears it is n't 
up to your old mark! The frank friend, you 
may remember, is Doctor Experience's favor- 
ite pupil. 

We are all trying to square wisdom with our 
own aims and errors. Professional men, whose 
business is the giving of advice, are fully aware 
of this. Death is the only arbiter who can 
enforce his own writs, and it is not for man 
to speak a final word on any matter. 

I was brought up to have an immense respect 
' — reverence, even — for law. It seemed to me 
in my youth to embody a tremendous philo- 
sophy. Here, I used to say, as I pondered opin- 
ion and precedent, — here is the very flower 
and fruit of the wisdom of the ages. I little 
dreamed that both sides of every case may be 
supported by authorities of equal dignity. 
Imagine my bewilderment when I found that a 
case which is likely to prove weak before one 
infallible judge may be shifted with little 
trouble to another, equally infallible, but with 
views known to be friendly to the cause in 
question. I sojourned for a time in a judicial 
circuit where there was considerable traveling 

97 



Experience and the Calendar 

to be done by the court and bar. The lawyer 
who was most enterprising in securing a 
sleeping-car stateroom wherein to play poker 
— discreetly and not too successfully — with 
the judge, was commonly supposed to have the 
best chance of winning his cases. 

Our neighbors' failures are really of no use to 
us. "No Admittance" and "Paint" are not 
accepted by the curious world as warnings, but 
as invitations. 

"A sign once caught the casual eye, 

And it said, 'Paint'; 
And every one who passed it by. 

Sinner or saint, 
Into the fresh green color must 

Make it his biz 
A doubting finger-point to thrust, 
That he, accepting naught on trust, 

Might say, *It is, it is!'" 

Cynic, do I hear? The term is not one of oppro- 
brium. A cynic is the alert and discerning man 
who declines to cut the cotton-filled pie or pick 
up the decoy purse on All Fools' Day. 

We are bound to test for ourselves the iden- 
tical heating apparatus which the man next 
door cast away as rubbish last spring. We know 

98 



Experience and the Calendar 

why its heat units were unsatisfactory to him, 
— it was because his chimneys were too small; 
and though our own are as like them as two 
peas we proceed to our own experiment with 
our eyes wide open. Mrs. B telephones to Mrs. 
A and asks touching the merits, habits, and pre- 
vious condition of servitude of the cook Mrs. A 
discharged this morning. Mrs. A, who holds an 
honorary degree bestowed upon her by the good 
Doctor Experience, leans upon the telephone 
and explains with conscientious detail the de- 
ficiencies of Mary Ann. She does as she would 
be done by and does it thoroughly. But what is 
her astonishment to learn the next day that 
Mary Ann's trunk has been transferred to Mrs. 
B's third story; that Mary Ann's impossible 
bread and deadly cake are upon Mrs. B's table! 
Mrs. B, too, took a course of lectures under 
Doctor Experience, and she admires him 
greatly; but what do these facts avail her when 
guests are alighting at the door and Mary Ann 
is the only cook visible in the urban land- 
scape.'* Moreover, Mrs. A always was (delect- 
able colloquialism!) a hard mistress, and 
Mrs. B must, she feels, judge of these matters 

99 



Experience and the Calendar 

for herself. And so — so — say we all of 
us! 

Men who have done post-graduate work In 
the good doctor's school are no better fortified 
against error than the rest of us who may never 
have got beyond his kindergarten. The results 
might be different if it were not that Mistress 
Vanity by her arts and graces demoralizes the 
doctor's students, whose eyes wander to the 
windows as she flits across the campus. Con- 
servative bankers, sage lawyers, and wise legis- 
lators have been the frequent and easy prey of 
the gold-brick operator. The police announce 
a new crop of "suckers" every spring, — 
which seems to indicate that Mistress Vanity 
wields a greater influence than Doctor Experi- 
ence. These words stare at me oddly in type; 
they are the symbols of a disagreeable truth, — 
and yet we may as well face it. The eternal ego 
will not bow to any dingy doctor whose lec- 
tures only illustrate his own inability to get on 
in the world. 

The best skating is always on thin ice, — we 
like to feel it crack and yield under our feet; 
there is a deadly fascination in the thought of 

ICO 



Experience and the Calendar 

the twenty or forty feet of cold water beneath. 
Last year's mortality list cuts (dare I do it?) no 
ice with us ; we must make our own experiments, 
while the doctor screams himself hoarse from 
his bonfire on the bank. He has held many an 
inquest on this darkling shore of the river of 
time, and he will undoubtedly live to hold many 
another; but thus far we have not been the sub- 
jects; and when it comes to the mistakes of 
others we are all delighted to serve on the 
coroner's jury. 

It is n't well for us to be saved from too many 
blunders; we need the discipline of failure. It is 
better to fail than never to try, and the man 
who can contemplate the graveyard of his own 
hopes without bitterness will not always be 
ignored by the gods of success. 

Septimus had a narrow escape yesterday. He 
was reading "Tom Jones" in the college library, 
when the doctor stole close behind him and 
Septimus's nervous system experienced a ter- 
rible shock. But it was the doctor's opportun- 
ity. "Read biography, young man; biograph- 
ies of the good and great are veritable text- 
books in this school!" So you may observe 

lOI 



Experience and the Calendar 

Septimus today sprawled under the noblest 
elm on the campus, with his eyes bulging out 
as he follows Napoleon on the retreat from Rus- 
sia. He has firmly resolved to profit by the 
failure of "the darkly-gifted Corsican." To- 
morrow evening, when he tries to hitch the 
doctor's good old Dobbin to the chapel bell, and 
falls from the belfry into the arms of the village 
constable, he is far more tolerant of Napo- 
leon's mistakes. An interesting biography is 
no more valuable than a good novel. If life 
were an agreed state of facts and not a joyful 
experiment, then we might lean upon biography ' 
as final; but in this and in all matters, let us deal 
squarely with Youth. Boswell's "Johnson" is 
only gossip raised to the highest power; the 
reading of it will make Septimus cheerfuler, but 
it will not keep him from wearing a dinner coat 
to a five o'clock tea or teach him how to earn 
more than four dollars a week. 

We have brought existence to an ideal state 
when at every breakfast table we face a new 
world with no more use for yesterday than for 
the grounds of yesterday's coffee. The wisdom 
behind us is a high wall which we cannot scale if 

102 



Experience and the Calendar 

we would. Its very height is tempting, but 
there is no rose-garden beyond it — only a 
bleak plain with the sea of time gnawing its 
dreary shores. 

To be old and to know ten thousand things — 
there is something august and majestic in the 
thought; but to be young and ignorant, to see 
yesterday pass, a shining ripple on the flood of 
oblivion, and then to buckle down to the day's 
business, — there's a better thing than being 
old and wise ! We are forever praising the un- 
conscious ease of great literature; and that ease 
— typical of the life and time reflected — was 
a thing of the day, with no yesterdays' dead 
weight dragging it down. Whitman's charm for 
those of us who like him lies in the fact that he 
does n't invite us to a rummage sale of cast-off 
raiment, but offers fabrics that are fresh and in 
new patterns. We have all known that same 
impatience of the past that he voices so stri- 
dently. The world is as new to him as it was 
to Isaiah or Homer. 

"When I heard the learned astronomer, 
When the proofs and figures were ranged in columns 
before me, 

103 



Experience and the Calendar 

When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, 

divide, and measure them; 
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer where he lec- 
tured with much applause in the lecture room, 
How soon, unaccountably, I became tired and sick, 
Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself, 
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time 
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars." 

The old doctor can name all the stars with- 
out a telescope, but he does not know that in 
joy they "perform their shining." The real 
note in life is experiment and quest, and we 
are detached far more than we realize from 
what was and concerned with what is and 
may be. 

There is a delightful comedy, — long popular 
in England and known in America, in which a 
Martian appears on earth to teach Dickens-like 
lessons of unselfishness to men. Since witness- 
ing it, I have often indulged in speculations as 
to the sensations of a pilgrim who might wing 
his way from another star to this earth, losing in 
the transition all knowledge of his own past- 
— and come freshly upon our world and its 
achievements, beholding man at his best and 
worst without any knowledge whatever of our 

104 



Experience and the Calendar 

history or of the evolution through which we 
have become what we are. There you would 
have a critic who could view our world with 
fresh eyes. What we were yesterday would 
mean nothing to him, and what we are to-day 
he might judge honestly from a standpoint of 
utility or beauty. Not what was old or new, 
but what was good, would interest him — not 
whether our morals are better than those of 
our ancestors, but whether they are of any use 
at all. The croaking plaint of Not-What-It- 
Used-To-Be, the sanguine It-Will-Come-In- 
Time, would have no meaning for such a 
judge. 

"And not only so, but we glory in tribula- 
tions also; knowing that tribulation worketh 
patience; and patience, experience; and experi- 
ence, hope." 

The conjunction of these last words is happy. 
Verily in experience lies our hope. In learning 
what to do and what not to do, in stumbling, 
falling to rise again and faring ever upward and 
onward. Yes, in and through experience lies 
our hope, but not, O brother, a wisdom gained 
vicariously, — not yours for me nor mine for 

105 



Experience and the Calendar 

you, — nor from enduring books, charm they 
never so wisely, — but every one of us, old and 
young, for himself. 

Literature is rich in advice that is utterly 
worthless. Life's "Book of Don'ts " is only read 
for the footnotes that explain why particular 
"don'ts " failed, — it has become in reality the 
"Book of Don'ts that Did." It is pleasant to 
remember that the gentle Autocrat, a man of 
science as well as of letters, did not allow pro- 
fessional courtesy to stand in the way of a char- 
acteristic fling at Doctor Experience. He goes, 
in his contempt, to the stupid creatures of the 
barnyard, and points in high disdain to "that 
solemn fowl. Experience, who, according to my 
observation, cackles oftener than she drops real 
live eggs." 

If the old doctor were to be taken at his own 
valuation and we should be disposed to profit 
by his teachings, our lives would be a dreary 
round; and youth, particularly, would find the 
ginger savorless in the jar and the ale stale in 
the pot. I saw my venerable friend walking 
abroad the other day in the flowered dressing- 
gown which he so much affects, wearing his 

io6 



Experience and the Calendar 

familiar classroom smile. I heard him warning 
a boy, who was hammering a boat together out 
of wretchedly flimsy material, that his argosy 
would never float; but the next day I saw the 
young Columbus faring forth, with his coat for 
sail, and saw him turn the bend in the creek 
safely and steer beyond "the gray Azores" of 
his dreams. 

The young admiral cannot escape the perils 
of the deep, and like St. Paul he will know 
shipwreck before his marine career is ended; 
but why discourage him? Not the doctor's 
hapless adventures, but the lad's own are going 
to make a man of him. I know a town where, 
thirty years ago, an afternoon newspaper failed 
about once every six months. There was, so 
the wiseacres afiirmed, no manner of use in 
trying it again. But a tow-headed boy put his 
small patrimony into a venture, reinforced it 
with vigorous independence and integrity, and 
made it a source of profit to himself and a 
valued agent in the community. In twenty 
years the property sold for a million dollars. 
Greatness, I assure Septimus, consists in achiev- 
ing the impossible. 

107 



Experience and the Calendar 

"Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days, 
Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes, 
And marching single in an endless file, 
Bring diadems and fagots in their hands. 
To each they offer gifts after his will. 
Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them 

all. 
I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp, 
Forgot my morning wishes, hastily 
Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day 
Turned and departed silent. I, too late, 
Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn." 

The season is at hand when Time throws his 
annual challenge in our teeth. The bell tinkles 
peremptorily and a calendar is thrust upon us. 
November is still young when we are dragged 
upon the threshold of another year. The leis- 
urely dismissal of the old year is no longer pos- 
sible; we may indulge in no lingering good-bye, 
but the old fellow hustles out in haste, with 
apologetic, shrinking step and we slam the door 
upon him. It is off with the old love and on with 
the new, whether we will or no. I solemnly pro- 
test against the invasion of the calendar. In an 
age that boasts of freedom, I rebel against a 
tyrant who comes merely to warn us of the 
fugitive character of Time; for that sharp elbow 

io8 



Experience and the Calendar 

in the ribs has prodded many a noble soul to his 
death. These pretty devices that we are asked 
to hang upon our walls are the seductive adver- 
tisements of an insinuating and implacable foe. 
We are asked to be particeps criminis in his 
hideous trade, for must I not tear off and cast 
as rubbish to the void a day, a week, a month, 
that I may not have done with at all.'* Why, 
may I ask, should I throw my yesterdays into 
the waste-basket.'' Yet if I fail, falling only a 
few leaves behind, is not my shameless inef- 
ficiency and heedlessness paraded before the 
world? How often have I delivered myself up 
to my enemies by suffering April to laugh her 
girlish laughter through torrid July? I know 
well the insinuating smile of the friend who, 
dropping in on a peaceful morning, when Time, 
as far as I am concerned, has paused in the hay- 
field to dream upon his scythe handle, walks 
coolly to the calendar and brings me up to date 
with a fine air of rebuke, as though he were 
conferring the greatest favor in the world. I am 
sure that I should have no standing with my 
neighbors if they knew that I rarely wind my 
watch and that the clocks in my house^ save 
109 



Experience and the Calendar 

one or two that are kept going merely to 
avoid explanations, are never wound. 

There is a gentle irony in the fact that the 
most insolent dispensers of calendars are the 
life insurance companies. It is a legitimate part 
of their nefarious game: you and I are their 
natural prey, and if they can accent for us the 
mortality of the flesh by holding up before us, 
in compact form, the slight round of the year, 
they are doing much to impress upon us the 
appalling brevity of our most reasonable ex- 
pectancy. How weak we are to suffer the in- 
timidation of these soulless corporations, who 
thrust their wares upon us as much as to say, 
"Here's a new year, and you'd better make 
the most of it, for there's no saying when you 
will get another." You, my friend, with your 
combined calendar and memorandum always 
before you, may pledge all your to-morrows if 
you will ; but as for me the Hypocritic Days, 
the Barefoot Dervishes, may ring my bell until 
they exhaust the battery without gaining a 
single hour as my grudging alms. 

We are all prone to be cowards, and to bend 
before the tyrant whose banner is spread vic- 

IIO 



Experience and the Calendar 

torlously on all our walls. Poets and philoso- 
phers aid and abet him; the preachers are for- 
ever telling us what a dreadful fellow he is, and 
warning us that if we don't get on the good side 
of him we are lost forever, — mere wreckage on 
a grim, inhospitable shore. Hypocrisy and false 
oaths are born of such teaching. Januarius, let 
us remember, was two-faced, and it has come 
about naturally that New Year's oaths carry a 
reserve. They are not, in fact, serious obli- 
gations. It is a poor soul that sets apart a cer- 
tain number of days for rectitude, and I can't 
for the life of me see anything noble in making 
a constable of the calendar. I find with joy that 
I am freeing myself of the tyrant's thrall. I am 
never quite sure of the day of the week; I date 
my letters yesterday or to-morrow with equal 
indifference. June usually thrusts her roses 
into my windows before I change the year in 
dating my letters. The magazines seem leagued 
with the calendar for man's undoing. I some- 
times rush home from an inspection of a maga- 
zine counter in mad haste to get where Ob- 
livion cannot stretch forth a long, lean arm 
and pluck me Into the eternal shades; for I 
III 



Experience and the Calendar 

decline with all the strength of my crude West- 
ern nature, to countenance the manufacture of 
yesterdays, no matter how cheerful they may 
be, out of my confident to-morrows. A March 
magazine flung into the teeth of a February 
blizzard does not fool the daffodils a particle. 
This stamping of months that have not arrived 
upon our current literature is nothing more or 
less than counterfeiting; — or rather, the issu- 
ing of false currency by the old Tyrant who 
stands behind the counter of the Bank of Time. 
And there is the railway time-table, — the un- 
conscious comic utterance of the Zeitgeist ! If 
the 12.59 is one minute or one hour late, who 
cares, I wonder.'' Who am I, pray, that I should 
stuff my pocket with calendars and time- 
tables } Why not throw the charts to the fishes 
and let the winds have their will with us awhile! 
Let us, I beg, leave some little margin in our 
lives for the shock of surprise ! 

The Daughters of Time are charming young 
persons, and they may offer me all the bread, 
kingdoms, stars they like; but they must cheer 
up or keep out of my front yard ! No shuffling 
around, like Barefoot Dervishes; but in golden 

112 



Experience and the Calendar 

sandals let them come, and I will kindle a fire of 
next year's calendars in their honor. When the 
snows weigh heavily upon the hills, let us not 
mourn for yesterday or waste time in idle spec- 
ulations at the fireside, but address ourselves 
manfully to the hour's business. And as some of 
the phrases of Horace's ode to Thaliarchus rap 
for attention in an old file box at the back of my 
head, I set down a pleasant rendering of them 
by Mr. Charles Edmund Merrill, Jr. 

"To-morrow? Shall the fleeting years 
Abide our questioning? They go , . 

All heedless of our hopes and fears. 

To-morrow? 'T is not ours to know 
That we again shall see the flowers. 

To-morrow is the gods', but oh, 
To-day is ours," 

We all salute heartily and sincerely the 
"grandeur and exquisiteness " of old age. It is 
not because Doctor Experience is old that we 
distrust his judgment; it is not his judgment 
that we distrust half so much as his facts. They 
are good, as facts go, but we are all foreordained 
and predestined to reap our own crop. He need 
not take the trouble to nail his sign, "No 

113 



Experience and the Calendar 

thoroughfare," on the highways that have 
perplexed him, for we, too, must stray into the 
brambles and stumble at the ford. It is decreed 
that we sail without those old charts of his, and 
we drop our signal-books and barometer over- 
board without a qualm. The reefs change with 
every tide, adding zest to our adventure; and 
while the gulfs may wash us down, there 's 
always the chance that, in our own way and 
after much anxious and stupid sailing, we 
may ground our barnacled hulks on the golden 
sands of the Happy Isles. Our blood cries for 
the open sea or the long white road, and 

**Rare the moment and exceeding fleet 

When the spring sunlight, tremulous and thin, 
Makes glad the pulses with tumultuous beat 
For meadows never won nor wandered in." 



should Smith go to Church? 



Should Smith go to Church? 

T THINK he should. Moreover, I think I 
-■- should set Smith an example by placing my- 
self on Sunday morning in a pew from which he ' 
may observe me at my devotions. Smith and I 
attended the same Sunday school when we 
were boys, and remained for church afterwards 
as a matter of course. Smith now spends his 
Sunday mornings golfing, or pottering about his 
garden, or in his club or office, and after the 
midday meal he takes a nap and loads his fam- 
ily into a motor for a flight countryward. It 
must be understood that I do not offer myself 
as a pattern for Smith. While I resent being 
classified with the lost sheep, I am, neverthe- 
less, a restless member of the flock, prone to 
leap the wall and wander. Smith is the best of 
fellows, — an average twentieth-century Amer- 
ican, diligent in business, a kind husband and 
father, and in politics anxious to vote for what 
he believes to be the best interests of the 
country. , 

117 



should Smith go to Church? 

In the community where we were reared it 
was not respectable not to go to church. I re- 
member distinctly that in my boyhood people 
who were not affiliated with some church were 
looked upon as lawless pariahs. An infidel was 
a marked man : one used to be visible in the 
streets I frequented, and I never passed him 
without a thrill of horror. Our city was long 
known as "a poor theatre town," where only 
Booth in Hamlet and Jefferson in Rip might be 
patronized by church-going people who valued 
their reputations. Yet in the same community 
no reproach attaches to-day to the non-church- 
going citizen. A majority of the men I know 
best, in cities large and small, do not go to 
church. Most of them are in nowise antagonis- 
tic to religion; they are merely indifferent. 
Clearly, there must be some reason for this 
change. It is inconceivable that men would 
lightly put from them the faith of their fathers 
through which they are promised redemption 
from sin and everlasting life. 

Now and then I hear it asserted that the 
church is not losing its hold upon the people. 
Many clergymen and laymen resent the oft- 

ii8 



should Smith go to Church? 

repeated statement that we Americans are not 
as deeply swayed by religion as in other times; 
but this seems to me a case of whistling through 
a graveyard on a dark night. 

A recent essayist,^ writing defensively of the 
church, cries, in effect, that it is moving toward 
the light; don't shoot! He declares that no one 
who has not contributed something toward the 
solution of the church's problem has earned the 
right to criticize. I am unable to sympathize 
with this reasoning. The church is either the 
repository of the Christian religion on earth, 
the divinely inspired and blessed tabernacle of 
the faith of Christ, or it is a stupendous fraud. 
There is no sound reason why the church should 
not be required to give an account of its stew- 
ardship. If it no longer attracts men and 
women in our strenuous and impatient Amer- 
ica, then it is manifestly unjust to deny to out- 
siders the right of criticism. Smith is far from 
being a fool, and if by his test of "What's in it 
forme.'"' he finds the church wanting, it is, as 
he would say, "up to the church" to expend 

* "Heckling the Church," The Atlantic Monthly, De- 
cember, 191 1. 

119 



Should Smith go to Church? 

some of its energy In proving that there Is a good 
deal in it for him. It is unfair to say to Smith, 
who has utterly lost touch with the church, 
that before he is qualified to criticize the ways 
and the manners of churches he must renew 
an allegiance which he was far too intelligent 
and conscientious to sever without cause. 

Nor can I justly be denied the right of criti- 
cism because my own ardor is diminished, and 
I am frequently conscious of a distinct luke- 
warmness. I confess to a persistent need in my 
own life for the support, the stimulus, the hope, 
that is inherent in the teachings of Christianity; 
nevertheless the church — that is to say, the 
Protestantism with which I am familiar — has 
seemed to me increasingly a wholly inadequate 
medium for communicating to men such as 
Smith and myself the help and Inspiration of 
the vision of Christ. There are far too many 
Smiths who do not care particularly whether 
the churches prosper or die. And I urge that 
Smith is worthy of the church's best considera- 
tion. Even if the ninety-and-nine were snugly 
housed in the fold, Smith's soul Is still worth 
the saving. 

120 



should Smith go to Church? 

"I don't want to go no furder 
Than my Testyment fer that." 

Yet Smith does n't care a farthing about the 
state of his soul. Nothing, in fact, interests him 
less. Smith's wife had been "brought up in the 
church," but after her marriage she displayed 
Smith to the eyes of the congregation for a few 
Easter Sundays and then gave him up. How- 
ever, their children attend Sunday school of a 
denomination other than that in which the 
Smiths were reared, and Smith gives money to 
several churches; he declares that he believes 
churches are a good thing, and he will do almost 
anything for a church but attend its services. 
What he really means to say is that he thinks 
the church is a good thing for Jones and me, but 
that, as for himself, he gets on comfortably 
without it. 

And the great danger both to the church and 
to Smith lies in the fact that he does apparently 
get on so comfortably without it! 



My personal experiences of religion and of 
churches have been rather varied, and while 

121 



should Smith go to Church? 

they present nothing unusual, I shall refer to 
them as my justification for venturing to speak 
to my text at all. I was baptized in the Episco- 
pal Church in infancy, but in about my tenth 
year I began to gain some knowledge of other 
Protestant churches. One of my grandfathers 
had been in turn Methodist and Presbyterian, 
and I "joined" the latter church in my youth. 
Becoming later a communicant of the Episcopal 
Church, I was at intervals a vestryman and 
a delegate to councils, and for twenty years 
attended services with a regularity that strikes 
me as rather admirable in the retrospect. 

As a boy I was taken to many "revivals" 
under a variety of denominational auspices, and 
later, as a newspaper reporter, I was frequently 
assigned to conferences and evangelistic meet- 
ings. I made my first "hit" as a reporter 
by my vivacious accounts of the perform- 
ances of a "trance" revivalist, who operated in 
a skating-rink in my town. There was some- 
thing indescribably "woozy" in those catalep- 
tic manifestations in the bare, ill-lighted hall. 
I even recall vividly the bump of the mourners' 
heads as they struck the floor, while the evan- 

122 



should Smith go to Church ? 

gelist moved among the benches haranguing 
the crowd. Somewhat earlier I used to deUght 
in the calisthenic performances of a "boy 
preacher" who ranged my part of the world. 
His physical activities were as astonishing as his 
volubility. At the high moment of his discourse 
he would take a flying leap from the platform to 
the covered marble baptismal font. He wore 
pumps for greater ease in these flights, and 
would run the length of the church with aston- 
ishing nimbleness, across the backs of the seats 
over the heads of the kneeling congregation. I 
often listened with delicious horripilations to 
the most startling of this evangelist's pero- 
rations, in which he described the coming of 
the Pale Rider. It was a shuddersome thing. 
The horror of it, and the wailing and cry- 
ing it evoked, come back to me after thirty 
years. 

The visit of an evangelist used to be an im- 
portant event in my town; converts were ob- 
jects of awed attention, particularly in the case 
of notorious hardened sinners whose repentance 
awakened the greatest public interest and sym- 
pathy. Now that we have passed the quarter- 
123 



should Smith go to Church? 

million mark, revivals cause less stir, for evan- 
gelists of the more militant, spectacular type 
seem to avoid the larger cities. Those who have 
never observed the effect of a religious revival 
upon a community not too large or too callous 
to be shaken by it have no idea of the power 
exerted by the popular evangelist. It is com- 
monly said that these visits only temporarily 
arrest the march of sin; that after a brief experi- 
ence of godly life the converts quickly relapse; 
but I believe that these strident trumpetings of 
the ram's horn are not without their salutary 
effect. The saloons, for a time at least, find 
fewer customers; the forces of decency are 
strengthened, and the churches usually gain in 
membership. Most of us prefer our religion 
without taint of melodrama, but it is far from 
my purpose to asperse any method or agency 
that may win men to better ways of life. 

At one time and another I seem to have read 
a good deal on various aspects of religion. New- 
man and the Tractarians interested me im- 
mensely. I purchased all of Newman's writings, 
and made a collection of his photographs, sev- 
eral of which gaze at me, a little mournfully and 

124 



should Smith go to Church? 

rebukingly, as I write; for presently I took a 
cold plunge into Matthew Arnold, and Rome 
ceased to call me. Arnold's writings on relig- 
ious subjects have been obscured by the growing 
reputation of his poetry; but it was only yester- 
day that "Literature and Dogma" and "God 
and the Bible" enjoyed great vogue. Retrans- 
lated continental criticism into terms that made 
it accessible to laymen, and encouraged liberal 
thought. He undoubtedly helped many to a 
new orientation in matters of faith. 

My reading in church history, dogma, and 
criticism has been about that of the average 
layman. I have enjoyed following the experi- 
ments of the psychical researchers, and have 
been a diligent student of the proceedings of 
heresy trials. The Andover case and the Briggs 
controversy once seemed important, and they 
doubtless were, but they established nothing of 
value. The churches are warier of heresy trials 
than they were; and in this connection I hold 
that a clergyman who entertains an honest 
doubt as to the virgin birth or the resurrection 
may still be a faithful servant of Jesus Christ. 
To unfrock him merely arouses controversy, 



should Smith go to Church? 

and draws attention to questions that can never 
be absolutely determined by any additional 
evidence likely to be adduced. The continu- 
ance in the ministry of a doubter on such points 
becomes a question of taste which I admit to be 
debatable; but where, as has happened once in 
late years, the culprit was an earnest and sin- 
cere doer of Christianity's appointed tasks, his 
conviction served no purpose beyond arousing a 
species of cynical enjoyment in the bosom of 
Smith, and of smug satisfaction in those who 
righteously flung a well-meaning man to the 
lions. 

Far more serious are the difficulties of those 
ministers of every shade of faith who find them- 
selves curbed and more or less openly threat- 
ened for courageously attacking evils they find 
at their own doors by those responsible for the 
conditions they assail. Only recently two or 
three cases have come to my attention of 
clergymen who had awakened hostility in their 
congregations by their zeal in social service. 
The loyal support of such men by their fellows 
seems to me far nobler than the pursuit of 
heretics. The Smiths of our country have 

126 



Should Smith go to Church ? 

learned to admire courage In their politics, and 
there is no reason for believing that they will 
not rally to a religion that practices It un- 
dauntedly. Christ, of all things, was no coward. 
There Is, I believe, nowhere manifest at this 
time, within the larger Protestant bodies at 
least, any disposition to defend the Inerrancy 
of the Bible, and this Is fortunate In that It 
leaves the churches free to deal with more vital 
matters. It seems fair to assume that criticism 
has spent Its force, and done Its worst. The 
spirit of the Bible has not been harmed by It. 
The reliance of the Hebrews on the beneficence 
of Jehovah, the testimony of Jesus to the endur- 
ing worth of charity, mercy, and love, have in 
nowise been Injured by textual criticism. The 
Old Testament, fancifully Imagined as the 
Word of God given by dictation to specially 
chosen amanuenses, appeals to me no more 
strongly than a Bible recognized as the vision 
of brooding spirits, who. In a time when the 
world was young, and earth was nearer heaven 
than now, were conscious of longings and 
dreams that were wonderfully realized In their 
own hearts and lives. And the essentials of 
127 



should Smith go to Church? 

Christ's teachings have lost nothing by criti- 
cism. 

The Smiths who have drifted away from the 
churches will hardly be brought back to the 
pews by even the most scholarly discussion of 
doubtful texts. Smith Is not Interested In the 
authenticity of lines or chapters, nor do nice 
points of dogma touch the affairs of his life or 
the needs of his soul. The fact that certain 
gentlemen In session at Nlcaea in a. d. 325 Issued 
a statement of faith for his guidance strikes 
him as negligible; It does not square with any 
need of which he Is conscious In his own breast. 

A church that would regain the lost Smiths 
will do well to satisfy that large company of the 
estranged and the indifferent that one need not 
believe all that Is contained between the lids of 
the Bible to be a Christian. Much of the Bible 
is vulnerable, but Jesus explained himself In 
terms whose clarity has in nowise been clouded 
by criticism. Smith has no time, even If he had 
the schokrshlp, to pass upon the merits of the 
Book of Daniel; but give him Christ's own 
words without elucidation and he Is at once on 
secure ground. There only lately came Into my 

128 



should Smith go to Church? 

hands a New Testament in which every utter- 
ance of Jesus is given the emphasis of black-face 
type, with the effect of throwing his sayings into 
high relief; and no one reading his precepts thus 
presented can fail to be impressed by the ex- 
actness with which He formulated his "secret" 
into a working platform for the guidance of 
men. Verily there could be no greater testi- 
mony to the divine authority of the Carpenter 
of Nazareth than the persistence with which his 
ideal flowers upon the ever-mounting mass of 
literature produced to explain Him. 



II 



Smith will not be won back to the church 
through appeals to theology, or stubborn reaf- 
firmations of creeds and dogmas. I believe it 
may safely be said that the great body of min- 
isters individually recognize this. A few cling to 
a superstition that there is inherent in religion 
itself a power which by some sort of magic, 
independently of man, will make the faith of 
Christ triumphant in the world. I do not be- 
lieve so; Smith could not be made to think so. 
And Smith's trouble is, if I understand him, not 
129 



should Smith go to Church ? 

with faith after all, but with works. The church 
does not impress him as being an efficient 
machine that yields adequate returns upon the 
investment. If Smith can be brought to works 
through faith, well enough; but he is far more 
critical of works than of faith. Works are 
within the range of his experience; he admires 
achievement: show him a foundation of works 
and interest him in strengthening that founda- 
tion and in building upon it, and his faith will 
take care of itself. 

The word we encounter oftenest in the busi- 
ness world nowadays is "efficiency"; the thing 
of which Smith must first be convinced is that 
the church may be made efficient. And on that 
ground he must be met honestly, for Smith is a 
practical being, who surveys religion, as every- 
thing else, with an eye of calculation. At a time 
when the ethical spirit in America is more 
healthy and vigorous than ever before. Smith 
does not connect the movements of which he is 
aware in business and politics with religion. 
Religion seems to him to be a poor starved side 
issue, not a source and guiding spirit in the 
phenomena he observes and respects. 

130 



should Smith go to Church? 

The economic waste represented in church 
investment and administration does not im- 
press Smith favorably, nor does it awaken ad- 
miration in Jones or in me. Smith knows that 
two groceries on opposite sides of the street are 
usually one too many. We used to be told that 
denominational rivalry aroused zeal, but this 
cannot longer be more than an absurd pretense. 
This idea that competition is essential to the 
successful extension of Christianity continues 
to bring into being many crippled and dying 
churches, as Smith well knows. And he has 
witnessed, too, a deterioration of the church's 
power through its abandonment of philan- 
thropic work to secular agencies, while churches 
of the familiar type, locked up tight all the week 
save for a prayer-meeting and choir-practice, 
have nothing to do. What strikes Smith is their 
utter wastefulness and futility. 

The lack of harmony in individual churches 
— and there is a good deal of it — is not reas- 
suring to the outsider. The cynical attitude of 
a good many non-church-going Smiths is due to 
the strifes, often contemptibly petty, prevailing 
within church walls. It seems difficult for 

131 



should Smith go to Church? 

Christians to dwell together in peace and con- 
cord. In almost every congregation there ap- 
pears to be a party favorable to the minister 
and one antagonistic to him. A minister who 
seemed to me to fill more fully the Christian 
ideal than any man I have known was harassed 
In the most brutal fashion by a congregation in- 
capable of appreciating the fidelity and self- 
sacrifice that marked his ministry. I recall 
with delight the fighting qualities of another 
clergyman who was an exceptionally brilliant 
pulpit orator. He was a Methodist who had 
fallen to the lot of a church that had not lately 
been distinguished for able preaching. This 
man filled his church twice every Sunday, and 
it was the one sought oftenest by strangers 
within the city's gates; yet about half his own 
membership hated him cordially. Though I was 
never of his flock, I enjoyed his sermons; and 
knowing something of his relations with the op- 
position party in his congregation, I recall with 
keenest pleasure how he fought back. Now and 
then an arrow grazed his ear; but he was un- 
heedful of warnings that he would be pilloried 
for heresy. He landed finally in his old age in 

132 



should Smith go to Church ? 

an obscure church, where he died, still fighting 
with his back to the wall. Though the shep- 
herd's crook as a weapon is going out of style, I 
have an idea that clergymen who stand sturdily 
for their own ideals receive far kindlier consid- 
eration than those who meekly bow to vestries, 
trustees, deacons, elders, and bishops. 

Music has long been notoriously a provoker 
of discord. Once in my news-hunting days I 
suffered the ignominy of a "scoop" on a choir- 
rumpus, and I thereupon formed the habit of 
lending an anxious ear to rumors of trouble in 
choir-lofts. The average ladder-like Te Deum, 
built up for the display of the soprano's vocal 
prowess, has always struck me as an unholy 
thing. I even believe that the horrors of highly 
embellished offertories have done much to 
tighten purse-strings and deaden generous im- 
pulses. The presence behind the pulpit of a 
languid quartette praising God on behalf of the 
bored sinners in the pews has always seemed to 
me the profanest of anomalies. Nor has long 
contemplation of vested choirs in Episcopal 
churches shaken my belief that church music 
should be an affair of the congregation. 

133 



should Smith go to Church? 

There seems to exist Inevitably, even In the 
smallest congregation, "a certain rich man" 
whose opinions must be respected by the pulpit. 
The minister of a large congregation confessed 
to me despairingly, not long ago, that the cour- 
age had been taken out of him by the protests 
evoked whenever he touched even remotely 
upon social topics like child labor, or shorter 
hours for worklngmen. There were manufact- 
urers in that church who would not "stand for 
it." Ministers are warned that they must at- 
tend to their own business, which Is preaching 
the Word of God not so concretely or practic- 
ally as to offend the "pillars." 

Just what is it, I wonder, that a minister may 
preach without hazarding his job? It Is said 
persistently that the trouble with the church 
at the present day is that the ministers no 
longer preach the Word of God; that if Christ- 
Ian Truth were again taught with the old 
vigor, people would hear It gladly. This Is, I 
believe, an enormous fallacy. I know churches 
where strict orthodoxy has been preached unin- 
terruptedly for years, and which have steadily 
declined In spite of It — or because of It. Not 

134 



Should Smith go to Church ? 

long ago, in a great assembly of one of the 
strongest denominations, when that cry for a 
return to the "Old Bible Truth" was raised, one 
minister rose and attacked the plea, declaring 
that he had never faltered in his devotion 
to ancient dogma, and yet his church was dy- 
ing. And even so, many churches whose walls 
echo uninterruptedly an absolutely impeccable 
orthodoxy are failing. We shall not easily per- 
suade Smith to forego the golf-links on Sun- 
day morning to hear the "Old Gospel Truth" 
preached in out-worn, meaningless phrases. 
Those old coins have the gold in them, but they 
must be recast in new moulds if they are again 
to pass current. 

Ill 

The difficulties of the clergy are greatly mul- 
tiplied in these days. The pulpit has lost its old 
authority. It no longer necessarily follows that 
the ministers are the men of greatest cultivation 
in their community. The Monday morning 
newspapers formerly printed, in my town, 
pretty full excerpts of sermons. I recall the 
case of one popular minister whose sermons 
135 



should Smith go to Church? 

continued to be printed long after he had re- 
moved to another city. Nowadays nothing 
from the pulpit that is not sensational is 
considered worth printing. And the parson 
has lost his social importance, moving back 
slowly toward his old place below the salt. He 
used to be "asked," even if he was not sincerely 
"expected" at the functions given by his par- 
ishioners; but this has changed now that fewer 
families have any parson to invite. 

A minister's is indubitably the hardest 
imaginable lot. Every one criticizes him. He is 
abused for illiberality, or, seeking to be all 
things to all men, he is abused for consorting 
with sinners. His door-bell tinkles hourly, and 
he must answer the behest of people he does not 
know, to marry or bury people he never heard 
of. He is expected to preach eloquently, to 
augment his flock, to keep a hand on the Suur 
day school, to sit on platforms in the interest 
of all good causes, and to bear himself with dis- 
cretion amid the tortuous mazes of church and 
secular politics. There seem to be, in churches 
of all kinds, ambitious pontiffs — lay popes — 
possessed of an ambition to hold both their fel- 

136 



Should Smith go to Church? 

low lajonen and their meek, long-suffering min- 
ister in subjection. Why anyone should wish to 
be a church boss I do not know; and yet the su- 
premacy is sometimes won after a struggle that 
has afforded the keenest delight to the cynical 
Smiths on the outside. One must view these 
Internecine wars more in sorrow than in anger. 
They certainly contribute not a little to popular 
distrust of the church as a conservator of love 
and peace. 

There are men In the ministry who can have 
had no clear vocation to the clerical life; but 
there are misfits and failures in all professions. 
Some of these, through bigotry or stupidity, do 
much to justify Smith's favorite dictum that 
there is as much Christianity outside the church 
as within it. Now and then I find a Smith 
whose distrust of religion Is based upon some 
disagreeable adventure with a clergyman, and I 
can't deny that my own experiences with the 
cloth have been, on one or two occasions, dis- 
turbing. As to the more serious of these I may 
not speak, but I shall mention two Incidents, 
for the reason that they are such trifles as affect 
Smith with joy. Once In a parish-meeting I saw 
137 



Should Smith go to Church? 

a bishop grossly humiliated for having under- 
taken to rebuke a young minister for wearing a 
chasuble, or not wearing it, or for removing it 
In the pulpit, or the other way round, — at any 
rate. It was some such momentous point in 
ecclesiastical millinery that had loosened a 
frightful fury of recrimination. The very sight 
or suggestion of chasubles has ever since awak- 
ened in me the most unchristian resentment. 
While we fought over the chasuble I suppose 
people actually died within bow-shot of the 
church without knowing that "if any man sin 
we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus 
Christ the Righteous." 

And speaking of bishops, I venture the inter- 
polation that that office, believed by many to 
be the softest berth in Zion as it exists in the 
Episcopal Church, Is in fact the most vexatious 
and thankless to which any man can aspire; nor 
have I in mind the laborious lives of adventur- 
ous spirits like Whipple, Hare, and Rowe, but 
others who carry the burdens of established 
dioceses, where the troubles of one minister are 
multiplied upon the apostolic head by the 
number of parishes in his jurisdiction. 

138 



should Smith go to Church? 

Again, at a summer resort on our North 
Atlantic Coast once familiar to me, there stood, 
within reach of fierce seas, one of the most 
charming of churches. It was sought dally by 
visitors, and many women, walking the shore, 
used to pause there to rest, for prayer, or out of 
sheer curiosity. And yet it appeared that no 
woman might venture into this edifice hatless. 
The locum tenens, recalling St. Paul's question 
whether it is "comely that a woman pray unto 
God uncovered," was so outraged by the visits 
of hatless women to the church that he tacked a 
notice on the door setting forth in severe terms 
that, whereas men should enter the church 
bareheaded, women should not desecrate the 
temple by entering uncovered. I remember 
that when I had read that warning, duly signed 
with the clergyman's name, I sat down on the 
rocks and looked at the ocean for a long time, 
marveling that a sworn servant of God, conse- 
crated in his service by the apostles' successors, 
able to spend a couple of months at one of the 
pleasantest sunmier resorts in America, should 
have been horror-struck at the unholy Intrusion 
of a hatless girl in his church, when people in 
139 



should Smith go to Church? 

the hot city he had fled suffered and died, 
ignorant of the very name of Christ. 

IV 

"My church home" is an old phrase one still 
hears in communities whose social life is not 
yet wholly divorced from the church. There is 
something pleasant and reassuring in the sound 
of it; and I do not believe we shall ever have in 
America an adequate substitute for that tran- 
quility and peace which are still observable in 
towns where the church retains its hold upon 
the larger part of the community, and where it 
exercises a degree of compulsion upon men and 
women who find in its life a faith and hope that 
have proved not the least strong of the bul- 
warks of democracy. In wholly strange towns I 
have experienced the sense of this in a way I am 
reluctant to think wholly sentimental. Where, 
on crisp winter evenings, the young people 
come trooping happily in from the meetings of 
their own auxiliary societies, where vim and 
energy are apparent in the gathering congrega- 
tion, and where one sees with half an eye that 
the pastor is a true leader and shepherd of his 

140 



should Smith go to Church? 

flock — in such a picture there must be, for 
many of us, something that lays deep hold upon 
the heart. They are not concerned in such 
gatherings with higher criticism, but with 
cleanness and wholesomeness of life, and with 
that faith, never to be too closely scrutinized or 
analyzed, that "singeth low in every heart." 

One might weep to think how rare those 
pictures must become — one might weep if 
there were not the great problems now forced 
upon us, of chance and change, that drive home 
to all thinking men and women the great need 
of infusing the life of the spirit into our indus- 
trial and political struggles. If, in the end, our 
great experiment in self-government fail, it 
will be through the loss of those spiritual forces 
which from the beginning have guided and 
ruled us. It is only lately that we have begun 
to hear of Christian socialism, and a plausible 
phrase it is; but true democracy seems to me 
essentially Christian. When we shall have 
thoroughly christianized our democracy, and 
democratized our Christianity, we shall not 
longer yield to moods of despair, or hearken 
to prophets of woe. 

HI 



should Smith go to Church? 

The Smith for whom I presume to speak is 
not indifferent to the call of revitalized democ- 
racy. He has confessed to me his belief that the 
world is a kindlier place, and that more agen- 
cies of helpfulness are at work, than ever be- 
fore; and to restore the recalcitrant Smith to 
the church it is necessary first of all to convince 
him that the church honestly seeks to be the 
chief of such agencies. The Young Men's 
Christian Association, the Charity Organiza- 
tion Society, and the Settlement House all 
afford outlets for Smith's generous benevo- 
lences. And it was a dark day for the church 
when she allowed these multiplying philanthror 
pies to slip away from her. Smith points to 
them with a flourish, and says that he prefers 
to give his money where it is put to practical 
use. To him the church is an economic parasite, 
doing business on one day of the week, immune 
from taxation, and the last of his neighbors to 
scrape the snow from her sidewalks! The fact 
that there are within fifteen minutes' walk of 
his house half a dozen churches, all struggling 
to maintain themselves, and making no appreci- 
able impression upon the community, is not 

143 



Should Smith go to Church ? 

lost upon Smith, — the practical, unemotional, 
busy Smith. Smith speaks to me with sincere 
admiration of his friend, the Salvation Army 
major, to whom he opens his purse ungrudg- 
ingly; but the church over the way — that 
grim expensive pile of stone, closed for all but 
five or six hours of the week! — Smith shakes 
his head ruefully when you suggest it. It is to 
him a bad investment that ought to be turned 
over to a receiver for liquidation. 

Smith's wife has derived bodily and spiritual 
help from Christian Science, and Smith speaks 
with respect of that cult. He is half persuaded 
that there must be something in it. A great 
many of the Smiths who never had a church tie, 
or who gave up church-going, have allied them- 
selves with Christian Science, — what many of 
Mrs. Eddy's followers in familiar talk abbrevi- 
ate as "Science," as though Science were the 
more important half of it. This proves at least 
that the Smiths are not averse to some sort of 
spiritual food, or quite cleariy demonstrates a 
dissatisfaction with the food they had formeriy 
received. It proves also that the old childlike 
faith in miracles is still possible even in our 

143 



Should Smith go to Church? 

generation. Christian Science struts in robes of 
prosperity in my bailiwick, and its followers 
pain and annoy me only by their cheerful as- 
sumption that they have just discovered God. 
Smith's plight becomes, then, more serious 
the more we ponder his case; but the plight of 
the church is not less grave to those who, feeling 
that Christianity has still its greatest work to 
do, are anxious for its rejuvenation. As to 
whether the church should go to Smith, or 
Smith should seek the church, there can be no 
debate. Smith will not seek the church; it must 
be on the church's initiative that he is restored 
to it. The Layman's Forward Movement testi- 
fies to the awakened interest of the churches in 
Smith. As I pen these pages I pick up a New 
York newspaper and find on the pages devoted 
to sports an advertisement signed by the Men 
and Religion Forward Movement, calling atten- 
tion to the eight hundred and eighty churches, 
Protestant and Catholic, and the one hundred 
and seven synagogues in the metropolis, — the 
beginning, I believe, of a campaign of advertis- 
ing on sporting pages. I repeat, that I wish to 
belittle no honest effort in any quarter or under 

144 



should Smith go to Church? 

any auspices to Interest men in the spiritual life; 
but I cannot forbear mentioning that Smith has 
already smiled disagreeably at this effort to 
catch his attention. Still, if Smith, looking for 
the baseball score, is reminded that the church 
is interested in his welfare, I am not one to sit 
in the scorner's seat. 

V 

A panacea for the ills of the church is some- 
thing no one expects to find; and those who are 
satisfied with the church as it stands, and be- 
lieve it to be unmenaced by danger, — who see 
the Will' of God manifested even in Smith's 
disaffection, will not be interested in my opinion 
that, of all the suggestions that have been made 
for the renewal of the church's life, church 
union, upon the broadest lines, directed to the 
increase of the church's efficiency in spiritual 
and social service, is the one most likely to bring 
Smith back to the fold. Moreover, I believe 
that Smith's aid should be invoked in the busi- 
ness of unification, for the reason that on pa- 
triotic grounds, if no other, he is vitally con- 
cerned in the welding of Christianity and de- 



should Smith go to Church ? 

mocracy more firmly together. Church union 
has long been the despair and the hope of 
many sincere, able, and devoted men, who 
have at heart the best interests of Christendom, 
and it is impossible that any great number of 
Protestants except the most bigoted reaction- 
aries can distrust the results of union. 

The present crisis — for it is not less than 
that — calls for more immediate action by all 
concerned than seems imminent. We have 
heard for many years that "in God's own time" 
union would be effected; and yet union is far 
from being realized. The difficulty of operating 
through councils and conventions is manifest. 
These bodies move necessarily and properly 
with great deliberation. Before the great 
branches of Protestantism have reconciled their 
differences, and agreed upon a modus vivendi, it 
is quite possible that another ten or twenty 
years may pass; and in the present state of the 
churches, time is of the essence of preservation 
and security. 

While we await action by the proposed World 
Conference for the consideration of questions 
touching "faith and order," much can be donq 

146 



Should Smith go to Church? 

toward crystallizing sentiment favorable to 
union. A letter has been issued to its clergy by 
the Episcopal Church, urging such profitable 
use of the interval of waiting; and I dare say the 
same spirit prevails in other communions. A 
purely sentimental union will not suffice, nor is 
the question primarily one for theologians or 
denominational partisans, but for those who 
believe that there is inherent in the method and 
secret of Jesus something very precious that is 
now seriously jeopardized, and that the time is 
at hand for saving it, and broadening and 
deepening the channel through which it reaches 
mankind. 

VI 

In the end, unity, if it ever take practical 
form, must become a local question. This is 
certainly true in so far as the urban field is con- 
cerned, and I may say in parenthesis that, in 
my own state, the country churches are already 
practicing a kind of unification, in regions where 
the automobile and the intern rban railway 
make it possible for farm and village folk to run 
into town to church. Many rural churches have 
been abandoned and boarded up, their congre- 
147 



should Smith go to Church? 

gations in this way forming new religious and 
social units. I suggest that in towns and cities 
where the weaknesses resulting from denomina- 
tional rivalry are mosis apparent, the problems 
of unification be taken up in a purely local way. 
I propose the appointment of local commis- 
sions, representative of all Protestant bodies, to 
study the question and devise plans for increas- 
ing the efficiency of existing churches, and to 
consider ways and means of bringing the church 
into vital touch with the particular community 
under scrutiny. This should be done in a spirit 
of absolute honesty, without envy, hatred, or 
malice. The test of service should be applied 
relentlessly, and every religious society should 
make an honest showing of its conditions and 
needs. 

Upon the trial-balance thus struck there 
should be, wherever needed, an entirely new 
redistribution of church property, based wholly 
upon local and neighborhood needs. For ex- 
ample, the familiar, badly housed, struggling 
mission in an industrial centre would be able 
at once to anticipate the fruits of years of 
labor, through the elimination of unnecessary 
148 



should Smith go to Church? 

churches In quarters already over-supplied. 
Not only should body and soul be cared for in 
the vigorous institutional church, the church of 
the future, but there is no reason why the pro- 
gramme should not include theatrical enter- 
tainments, concerts, and dances. Many signs 
encourage the belief that the drama has a 
great future in America, and the reorganized, 
redistributed churches might well seize upon it 
as a powerful auxiliary and ally. Scores of 
motion-picture shows in every city testify to 
the growing demand for amusement, and they 
conceal much mischief; and the public dance- 
house is a notorious breeder of vice. 

Let us consider that millions of dollars are 
invested in American churches, which are, in 
the main, open only once or twice a week, and 
that fear of defiling the temple is hardly justi- 
fication for the small amount of actual service 
performed by the greater number of churches 
of the old type. By introducing amusements, 
the institutional church — the "department 
church," if you like — would not only meet a 
need, but it would thus eliminate many ele- 
ments of competition. The people living about 
149 



should Smith go to Church ? 

a strong institutional church would find it, in a 
new sense, "a church home." The doors should 
stand open seven days in the week to "all such 
as have erred and are deceived"; and men and 
women should be waiting at the portals "to 
comfort and help the weak-hearted; and to 
raise up those who fall." 

If in a dozen American cities having from 
fifty thousand to two or three hundred thou- 
sand inhabitants, this practical local approach 
toward union should be begun in the way indi- 
cated, the data adduced would at least be of 
importance to the convocations that must ulti- 
mately pass upon the question. Just such facts 
and figures as could be collected by local com- 
missions would naturally be required, finally, in 
any event; and much time would be saved by 
anticipating the call for such reports. 

I am familiar with the argument that many 
sorts of social service are better performed by 
non-sectarian societies, and we have all wit- 
nessed the splendid increase of secular effort in 
lines feebly attacked and relinquished, as 
though with a grateful sigh, by the churches. 
When the Salvation Army's trumpet and drum 

ISO 



Should Smith go to Church? 

first sounded in the market-place, we were told 
that that valiant organization could do a work 
impossible for the churches; when the Settle- 
ment House began to appear in American cities, 
that, too, was undertaking something better left 
to the sociologist. Those prosperous organiza- 
tions of Christian young men and women, 
whose investment in property in our American 
cities is now very great, are, also, we are as- 
sured, performing a service which the church 
could not properly have undertaken. Charity 
long ago moved out of the churches, and estab- 
lished headquarters in an office with typewriter 
and telephone. 

If it is true that the service here indicated is 
better performed by secular organizations, why 
is it that the power of the church has steadily 
waned ever since these losses began ^ Certainly 
there is little in the present state of American 
Protestantism to afford comfort to those who 
believe thataone-day-a-week church, whose ap- 
paratus is limited to a pulpit in the auditorium, 
and a map of the Holy Land in the Sunday- 
school room, is presenting a veritable, living 
Christ to the hearts and imaginations of men. 



should Smith go to Church? 

And on the bright side of the picture it shouldl 
be said that nothing in the whole field of Chris- 
tian endeavor is more encouraging or inspiring 
than an examination of the immense social ser- 
vice performed under the auspices of various 
religious organizations in New York City. This 
has been particularly marked in the Episcopal 
Church. The late Bishop Potter, and his suc- 
cessor in the metropolitan diocese, early gave 
great impetus to social work, and those who 
contend that the church's sole business is to 
preach the Word of God will find a new revela- 
tion of the significance of that Word by a study 
of the labors of half a dozen parishes that ex- 
emplify every hour of every day the possibilities 
of efiicient Christian democracy. 

The church has lost ground that perhaps 
never can be recovered. Those who have estab- 
lished secular settlements for the poor, or those 
who have created homes for homeless young 
men and women, can hardly be asked to "pool " 
and divide their property with the churches. 
But, verily, even with all the many agencies 
now at work to ameliorate distress and uplift 
the fallen, the fields continue white already to 

152 



should Smith go to Church ? 

the harvest, and the laborers are few. With the 
church revitalized, and imbued with the spirit 
of utility and efficiency so potent in our time, it 
may plant its wavering banner securely on new 
heights. It may show that all these organiza- 
tions that have sapped its strength, and dimin- 
ished the force of its testimony before men, 
have derived their inspiration from Him who 
came out of Nazareth to lighten all the world. 

VII 

The reorganization of the churches along the 
line I have indicated would work hardship on 
many ministers. It would not only mean that 
many clergymen would find themselves seri- 
ously disturbed in positions long held under the 
old order, but that preparation for the ministry 
would necessarily be conducted along new 
lines. The training that now fits a student to be 
the pastor of a one-day-a-week church would be 
worthless in a unified and socialized church. 

"There are diversities of gifts "; but "it is the 

same God which worketh all in all." In the 

departmental church, with its chapel or temple 

fitly adorned, the preaching of Christ's message 

153 



should Smith go to Church? 

would not be done by a weary minister worn by 
the thousand vexatious demands upon a min- 
ister's time, but by one specially endowed with 
the preaching gift. In this way the prosperous 
congregation would not enjoy a monopoly of 
good preaching. Men gifted in pastoral work 
would specialize in that, and the relationship 
between the church and the home, which has 
lost its old fineness and sweetness, would be 
restored. Men trained in that field would direct 
the undertakings frankly devised to provide 
recreation and amusement. Already the school- 
house in our cities is being put to social use; in 
the branch libraries given by Mr. Carnegie to 
my city, assembly-rooms and kitchens are pro- 
vided to encourage social gatherings; and here 
is another opportunity still open to the church 
if it hearken to the call of the hour. 

In this unified and rehabilitated church of 
which I speak, — the every-day-in-the-week 
church, open to all sorts and conditions of men, 
— what would become of the creeds and the 
old theology? I answer this first of all by saying 
that coalition in itself would be a supreme de- 
monstration of the enduring power and glory of 

154 



should Smith go to Church? 

Christianity. Those who are jealous for the 
integrity of the ancient faith would manifestly 
have less to defend, for the church would be 
speaking for herself in terms understood of all 
men. The seven-day church, being built upon 
efficiency and aiming at definite results, could 
afford to suifer men to think as they liked on 
the virgin birth, the miracles, and the resurrec- 
tion of the body, if they faithfully practiced the 
precepts of Jesus. 

This busy, helpful, institutional church, wel- 
coming under one roof men of all degrees, to 
broaden, sweeten, and enlighten their lives, need 
ask no more of those who accept its service 
than that they believe in a God who ever lives 
and loves, and in Christ, who appeared on earth 
in His name to preach justice, mercy, charity, 
and kindness. I should not debate metaphysics 
through a barred wicket with men who needed 
the spiritual or physical help of the church, any 
more than my neighbor. Smith, that prince of 
good fellows, would ask a hungry tramp to saw 
a cord of wood before he gave him his breakfast. 

Questions of liturgy can hardly be a bar, nor 
can the validity of Christian orders in one body 

155 



should Smith go to Church? 

or another weigh heavily with any who are sin- 
cerely concerned for the life of the church and 
the widening of its influence. "And other sheep 
I have, which are not of this fold; them also I 
must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and 
they shall become one flock, one shepherd." I 
have watched ministers in practically every 
Christian church take bread and break it, and 
bless the cup, and offer it in the name of Jesus, 
and I have never been able to feel that the sac- 
rament was not as efficacious when received 
reverently from one as from another. 

If wisdom and goodness are God, then fool- 
ish, indeed, is he who would "misdefine these 
till God knows them no more." The unified 
seven-day church would neglect none of "the 
weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy 
and faith," in the collecting of tithe of mint and 
anise and cummin. It would not deny its bene- 
fits to those of us who are unblest with deep 
spiritual perception, for it is by the grace of 
God that we are what we are. " I will pray with 
the spirit, and I will pray with the understand- 
ing also: I will sing with the spirit and I will 
sing with the understanding also. Else if thou 
'IS6 



should Smith go to Church? 

bless with the spirit, how shall he that fiUeth 
the place of the unlearned say the Amen at thy 
giving of thanks, seeing he knoweth not what 
thou sayest?" 

" Hath man no second life? — Pitch this one high ! 

Sits there no judge in Heaven our sins to see? — 
More strictly y then, the inward judge obey ! 
Was Christ a man like us ? Ah, let us try 

If we, then, too, can he such men as he !" 

Somewhere there is a poem that relates the 
experience of a certain humble priest, who 
climbed the steeple of his church to commune 
more nearly with God^ And, as he prayed, he 
heard the Voice answering, and asked, "Where 
art thou. Lord?" and the Lord replied, "Down 
here, among my people!" 



The Tired Business Man 



The Tired Business Man 



SMITH flashed upon me unexpectedly in 
Berlin. It was nearly a year ago, just be- 
fore the summer invasion of tourists, and I was 
reading the letters of a belated mail over my 
cofi'ee, when I was aroused by an unmistakable 
American voice demanding water. I turned 
and beheld, in a sunny alcove at the end of the 
restaurant, my old friend Smith who had 
dropped his newspaper for the purpose of ar- 
raigning a frightened and obtuse waiter for his 
inability to grasp the idea that persons in ordi- 
nary health, and reasonably sane, do, at times, 
use water as a beverage. It was not merely the 
alarmed waiter and all his tribe that Smith 
execrated: he swept Prussia and the German 
Empire into the limbo of lost nations. Mrs. 
Smith begged him to becalm, offering the plaus- 
ible suggestion that the waiter could n't under- 
stand a word of English. She appealed to a 
third member of the breakfast party, a young 

i6i 



The Tired Business Man 

lady, whose identity had puzzled me for a 
moment. It seemed incredible that this could 
be the Smiths' Fanny, whom I had dandled 
on my knee in old times, — and yet a second 
glance convinced me that the young person was 
no unlikely realization of the promise of the 
Fanny who had ranged our old neighborhood at 
"home" and appalled us, even at five, by her 
direct and pointed utterances. If the child may 
be mother to the woman, this was that identical 
Fanny. I should have known it from the cool 
fashion in which she dominated the situation, 
addressing the relieved waiter in his own 
tongue, with the result that he fled precipitately 
in search of water — and ice, if any, indeed, 
were obtainable — for the refreshment of these 
eccentric Americans. 

When I crossed to their table I found Smith 
still growling while he tried to find his lost place 
in the New York stock market in his London 
newspaper. My appearance was the occasion 
for a full recital of his wrongs, in that amusing 
hyperbole which is so refreshing in all the 
Smiths I know. He begged me to survey the 
table, that I might enjoy his triumph in having 

162 



The Tired Business Man 

been able to surmount local prejudice and pro- 
cure for himself what he called a breakfast of 
civilized food. The continental breakfast was 
to him an odious thing: he announced his inten- 
tion of exposing it; he meant to publish its 
iniquity to the world and drive it out of busi- 
ness. Mrs. Smith laughed nervously. She ap- 
peared anxious and distraught and I was smit- 
ten with pity for her. But there was a twinkle 
in Miss Smith's eye, a smile about her pretty 
lips, that discounted heavily the paternal fury. 
She communicated, with a glance, a sense of her 
own attitude toward her father's indignation: 
it did not matter a particle; it was merely 
funny, that was all, that her father, who de- 
manded and commanded all things on his own 
soil, should here be helpless to obtain a drop of 
cold water with which to slake his thirst when 
every one knew that he could have bought the 
hotel itself with a scratch of the pen. When 
Smith asked me to account for the prevalence of 
hydrophobia in Europe it was really for the joy 
of hearing his daughter laugh. And it is well 
worth anyone's while to evoke laughter from 
Fanny. For Fanny is one of the prettiest girls 

163 



The Tired Business Man 

in the world, one of the cleverest, one of the 
most interesting and amusing. 

II 

As we lingered at the table (water with ice 
having arrived and the Stars and Stripes flying 
triumphantly over the pitcher), I was brought 
up to date as to the recent history of the 
Smiths. As an old neighbor from home they 
welcomed me to their confidence. The wife and 
daughter had been abroad a year with Munich 
as their chief base. Smith's advent had been 
unexpected and disturbing. Rest and change 
having been prescribed, he had jumped upon a 
steamer and the day before our encounter had 
joined his wife and daughter in Berlin. They 
were waiting now for a conference with a Ger- 
man neurologist to whom Smith had been con- 
signed — in desperation, I fancied — by his 
American doctor. Mrs. Smith's distress was as 
evident as his own irritation; Miss Fanny alone 
seemed wholly tranquil. She ignored the ap- 
parent gravity of the situation and assured me 
that her father had at last decided upon a long 
vacation. She declared that if her father per- 
164 



The Tired Business Man 

sisted in his intention of sailing for New York 
three weeks later, she and her mother would 
accompany him. 

While we talked a cablegram was brought to 
Smith; he read it and frowned. Mrs. Smith met 
my eyes and shook her head; Fanny frugally 
subtracted two thirds of the silver Smith was 
leaving on the tray as a tip and slipped it into 
her purse. It was a handsome trinket, the 
purse; Fanny's appointments all testified to 
Smith's prosperity and generosity. I remem- 
bered these friends so well in old times, when 
they lived next door to me in the Mid-Western 
town which Smith, ten years before, had out- 
grown and abandoned. His income had in my 
observation jumped from two to twenty thou- 
sand, and no one knew now to what fabulous 
height it had climbed. He was one of the men 
to reckon with in the larger affairs of "Big 
Business." And here was the wife who had 
shared his early struggles, and the child born of 
those, contented years, and here was Smith, 
with whom in the old days I had smoked my 
after-breakfast cigar on the rear platform of a 
street car in our town, that we then thought the 
i6s 



The Tired Business Man 

"best town on earth," — here were my old 
neighbors in a plight that might well tax the 
renowned neurologist's best powers. 

What had happened to Smith? I asked my- 
self; and the question was also in his wife's 
wondering eyes. And as we dallied, Smith 
fingered his newspaper fretfully while I an- 
swered his wife's questions about our common 
acquaintances at "home" as she still called our 
provincial capital. 

It was not my own perspicacity but Fanny's 
which subsequently made possible an absolute 
diagnosis of Smith's case, somewhat before the 
cautious German specialist had announced it. 
From data supplied by Fanny I arrived at the 
conclusion that Smith is the "tired business 
man," and only one of a great number of Ameri- 
can Smiths afflicted with the same malady, — 
bruised, nerve-worn victims of our malignant 
gods of success. The phrase, as I shall employ 
it here, connotes not merely the type of iron- 
gray stock broker with whom we have been 
made familiar by our American drama of busi- 
ness and politics, but his brother (also prema- 
turely gray and a trifle puffy under the eyes) 

i66 



The Tired Business Man 

found sedulously burning incense before Mam- 
mon in every town of one hundred thousand 
souls in America. I am not sure, on reflection, 
that he is not visible in thriving towns of 
twenty-five thousand, — or wherever " col- 
lateral" and "discount" are established in the 
local idiom and the cocktail is a medium of 
commercial and social exchange. The phe- 
nomena presented by my particular Smith are 
similar to those observed in those lesser Smiths 
who are the restless and dissatisfied biggest 
frogs in smaller puddles. Even the farmers are 
tired of contemplating their glowing harvests 
and bursting barns and are moving to town to 
rest. 

Ill 
Is it possible that tired men really wield a 
considerable power and influence in these Amer- 
ican States so lately wrested from savagery? 
Confirmation of this reaches us through many 
channels. In politics we are assured that the 
tired business man is a serious obstructionist in 
the path of his less prosperous and less weary 
brethren engaged upon the pursuit of happiness 
and capable of enjoying it in successes that 
167 ^ 



The Tired Business Man 

would seem contemptibly meagre to Smith. 
Thousands of Smiths who have not yet ripened 
for the German specialists are nevertheless 
tired enough to add to the difficulty of securing 
so simple a thing as reputable municipal gov- 
ernment. It is because of Smith's weariness 
and apathy that we are obliged to confess that 
no decent man will accept the office of mayor 
in our American cities. 

In my early acquaintance with Smith — in 
those simple days when he had time to loaf in 
my office and talk politics — an ardent patri- 
otism burned in him. He was proud of his an- 
cestors who had not withheld their hand all the 
way from Lexington to Yorktown, and he used 
to speak with emotion of that dark winter at 
Valley Forge. He would look out of the window 
upon Washington Street and declare, with a 
fine sweep of the hand, that "We Ve got to keep 
all this; we've got to keep it for these people 
and for our children." He had not been above 
sitting as delegate in city and state conventions, 
and he had once narrowly escaped a nomination 
for the legislature. The industry he owned and 
managed was a small affair and he knew all the 

i68 



The Tired Business Man 

employees by name. His lucky purchase of a 
patent that had been kicked all over the United 
States before the desperate inventor offered it 
to him had sent his fortunes spinning into mil- 
lions within ten years. Our cautious banker 
who had vouchsafed Smith a reasonable 
guarded credit in the old days had watched, 
with the mild cynical smile peculiar to conserv- 
ative bank presidents, the rapid enrollment of 
Smith's name in the lists of directors of some of 
the solidest corporations known to Wall Street. 
It is a long way from Washington Street to 
Wall Street, and men who began life with more 
capital than Smith never cease marveling at 
the ease with which he effected the transition. 
Some who continue where he left them In the 
hot furrows stare gloomily after him and ex- 
claim upon the good luck that some men have. 
Smith's abrupt taking-off would cause at least a 
momentary chill in a thousand safety-vault 
boxes. Smith's patriotism, which In the old 
days, when he liked to speak of America as the 
republic of the poor, and when he knew most of 
the "Commemoration Ode" and all of the 
"Gettysburg Address" by heart, is far more 
169 



The Tired Business Man 

concrete than it used to be. When Smith visits 
Washington during the sessions of Congress the 
country is informed of it. It is he who scrutin- 
izes new senators and passes upon their trust- 
worthiness. And it was Smith who, after one of 
these inspections, said of a member of our upper 
chamber that, "He 's all right; he speaks our 
language," meaning not the language of the 
"Commemoration Ode" or the "Gettysburg 
Address," but a recondite dialect understood 
only at the inner gate of the money-changers. 

IV 

No place was ever pleasanter in the old days 
than the sitting-room of Smith's house. It was 
the coziest of rooms and gave the lie to those 
who have maintained that civilization is im- 
possible around a register. A happy, contented 
family life existed around that square of per- 
forated iron in the floor of the Smiths' sitting- 
room. In the midst of arguments on life, letters, 
the arts, politics, and what-not. Smith would, 
as the air grew chill toward midnight, and 
when Mrs. Smith went to forage for refresh- 
ments in the pantry, descend to the cellar to 

170 



The Tired Business Man 

renew the flagging fires of the furnace with his 
own hands. The purchase of a new engraving, 
the capture of a rare print, was an event to be 
celebrated by the neighbors. We went to the 
theatre sometimes, and kept track of the affairs 
of the stage; and lectures and concerts were not 
beneath us. Mrs. Smith played Chopin charm- 
ingly on a piano Smith had given her for a 
Christmas present when Fanny was. three. 
They were not above belonging to our neigh- 
borhood book and magazine club, and when 
they bought a book it was a good one. I re- 
member our discussions of George Meredith 
and Hardy and Howells, and how we saved 
Stockton's stories to enjoy reading them in 
company around the register. A trip to New 
York was an event for the Smiths in those days 
as well as for the rest of us, to be delayed until 
just the right moment for seeing the best 
plays, and an opera, with an afternoon care- 
fully set apart for the Metropolitan Museum. 
We were glad the Smiths could go, even if the 
rest of us could n't; for they told us all so gen- 
erously of their adventures when they came 
back! They kept a "horse and buggy," and 
171 



The Tired Business Man 

Mrs. Smith used to drive to the factory with 
Fanny perched beside her to bring Smith home 
at the end of his day's work. 

In those days the Smiths presented a picture 
before which one might be pardoned for Hnger- 
ing in admiration. I shall resent any sugges- 
tions that I am unconsciously writing them 
down as American bourgeois with the con- 
temptuous insinuations that are conveyed by 
that term. Nor were they Philistines, but 
sound, wholesome, cheerful Americans, who 
bought their eggs direct from "the butter- 
man" and kept a jug of buttermilk in the ice^ 
box. I assert that Smiths of their type were and 
are, wherever they still exist, an encouragement 
and a hope to all who love their America. 
They are the Americans to whom Lincoln be- 
came as one of Plutarch's men, and for whom 
Longfellow wrote "The Children's Hour," 
and on whom Howells smiles quizzically and 
with complete understanding. Thousands of 
us knew thousands of these Smiths only a few 
years ago, all the way from Portland, Maine, to 
Portland, Oregon. I linger upon them affec- 
tionately as I have known and loved them in 

172 



The Tired Business Man 

the Ohio Valley, but I have enjoyed glimpses 
of them in Kansas City and Omaha, Minnea- 
polis and Detroit, and know perfectly well that 
I should find them realizing to the full life, lib- 
erty, and the pursuit of happiness in many 
other regions, — for example, with only slight 
differences of background, in Richmond, Vir- 
ginia, and Burlington, Vermont. And in all 
these places some particular Smith is always 
moving to Chicago or Boston or New York on 
his way to a sanatorium or Bad Neuheim and a 
German specialist! Innumerable Smiths, not 
yet so prosperous as the old friend I encoun- 
tered in Berlin, are abandoning their flower- 
gardens and the cozy verandas (sacred to 
neighborhood confidences on the long summer 
evenings) and their gusty registers for compact 
and steam-heated apartments with only the 
roof-garden overhead as a breathing-place. 

There seems to be no field in which the weary 
Smith is not exercising a baneful Influence. We 
have fallen into the habit of laying many of our 
national sins at his door, and usually with rea- 
son. His hand is hardly concealed as he thrusts 
it nervously through the curtains of legislative 

173 



The Tired Business Man 

chambers, state and national. He invades city- 
halls and corrupts municipal councils. Even the 
fine arts are degraded for his pleasure. Smith, it 
seems, is too weary from his day's work to care 
for dramas 

"That bear a weighty and a serious brow, 
Sad, high, and working, full of state and woe." 

He is one of the loyalest patrons of that type of 
beguilement known as the "musical comedy," 
which in its most engaging form is a naughty 
situation sprinkled with cologne water and set 
to waltz time. Still, if he dines at the proper 
hour at a Fifth Avenue restaurant and eats 
more and drinks more than he should (to fur- 
ther the hardening of his arteries for the Ger- 
man specialist), he may arrive late and still 
hear the tune everyone on Broadway is whis- 
tling. The girl behind the book-counter knows 
Smith a mile off, and hands him at once a novel 
that has a lot of "go" to it, or one wherein 
"smart" people assembled in house-parties for 
week-ends, amuse themselves by pinning pink 
ribbons on the Seventh Commandment. If the 
illustrations are tinted and the first page opens 

174 



The Tired Business Man 

upon machine-gun dialogue, the sale is effected 
all the more readily. Or, reluctant to tackle a 
book of any sort, he may gather up a few of 
those magazines whose fiction jubilantly em- 
phasizes the least noble passions of man. And 
yet my Smith delighted, in those old days 
around the register, in Howells's clean, firm 
stroke; and we were always quoting dear Stock- 
ton — "black stockings for sharks" — "put 
your board money in the ginger jar." What 
a lot of silly, happy, comfortable geese we 
were! 

It seems only yesterday that the first trayful 
of cocktails jingled into a parlor in my town as 
a prelude to dinner; and I recall the scandalous 
reports of that innovation which passed up and 
down the maple-arched thoroughfares that give 
so sober and cloistral an air to our residential 
area. When that first tray appeared at our 
elbows, just before that difficult moment when 
we gentlemen of the provinces, rather con- 
scious at all times of our dress-coats, are won- 
dering whether it is the right or left arm we 
should offer the lady we are about to take in, 
we were startled, as though the Devil had in- 

m 



The Tired Business Man 

vaded the domestic sanctuary and perched 
himself on the upright piano. Nothing is more 
depressing than the thought that all these 
Smiths, many of whose fathers slept in the 
rain and munched hard-tack for a principle in 
the sixties, are unable to muster an honest 
appetite, but must pucker their stomachs with 
a tonic before they can swallow their daily 
bread. Perhaps our era's great historian will 
be a stomach specialist whose pages, bristling 
with statistics and the philosophy thereof, will 
illustrate the undermining and honeycombing 
of our institutions by gin and bitters. 

V 

The most appalling thing about us Americans 
is our complete sophistication. The English are 
children. An Englishman is at no moment so 
delightful as when he lifts his brows and says 
"Really!" The Frenchman at his sidewalk 
table watches the world go by with unwearied 
delight. At any moment Napoleon may appear; 
or he may hear great news of a new drama, or 
the latest lion of the salon may stroll by. Awe 
and wonder are still possible in the German, 
176 



The Tired Business Man 

bred as he is upon sentiment and fairy-lore: the 
Italian is beautifully credulous. On my first 
visit to Paris, having arrived at midnight and 
been established in a hotel room that hung 
above a courtyard which I felt confident had 
witnessed the quick thrusts of Porthos, Athos, 
and Aramis, I wakened at an early hour to the 
voice of a child singing in the area below. It has 
always seemed tome that that artless song flung 
out upon the bright charmed morning came 
from the very heart of France! France, after 
hundreds of years of achievement, prodigious 
labor, and staggering defeat, is still a child 
among the nations. 

Only the other day I attended a prize-fight in 
Paris. It was a gay affair held in a huge amphi- 
theatre and before a great throng of spectators 
of whom a third were women. The match was 
for twenty rounds between a Frenchman and an 
Australian negro. After ten rounds it was 
pretty clear that the negro was the better man; 
and my lay opinion was supported by the judg- 
ment of two American journalists, sounder 
critics than I profess to be of the merits of such 
contests. The decision was, of course, in favor 
177 



The Tired Business Man 

of the Frenchman and the cheering was vocifer- 
ous and prolonged. And it struck me as a fine 
thing that that crowd could cheer so lustily the 
wrong decision! It was that same spirit that 
led France forth jauntily against Bismarck's 
bayonets. I respect the emotion with which a 
Frenchman assures me that one day French 
soldiers will plant the tri-color on the Branden- 
burg Gate. He dreams of it as a child dreams 
of to-morrow's games. 

But we are at once the youngest and the old- 
est of the nations. We are drawn to none but 
the "biggest" shows, and hardly cease yawning 
long enough to be thrilled by the consummating 
leap of death across the four rings where folly 
has already disproved all natural laws. The old 
prayer, "Make me a child again just for to- 
night," has vanished with the belief in Santa 
Claus. No American really wants to be a child 
again. It was with a distinct shock that I heard 
recently a child of five telephoning for an auto- 
mobile in a town that had been threatened by 
hostile Indians not more than thirty years ago. 
Our children avail themselves with the coolest 
condescension of all the apparatus of our com- 

178 



The Tired Business Man 

plex modem life: they are a thousand years old 
the day they are born. 

The farmer who once welcomed the lightning- 
rod salesman as a friend of mankind is moving 
to town now and languidly supervising the till- 
ing of his acres from an automobile. One of these 
vicarious husbandmen, established in an Indi- 
ana county seat, found it difficult to employ his 
newly acquired leisure. The automobile had 
not proved itself a toy of unalloyed delight, and 
the feet that had followed unwearied the hay 
rake and plow faltered upon the treads of the 
mechanical piano. He began to alternate motor 
flights with more deliberate drives behind a 
handsome team of blacks. The eyes of the town 
undertaker fell in mortal envy upon that team 
and he sought to buy it. The tired husbandman 
felt that here, indeed, was an opportunity to 
find light gentlemanly occupation, while at the 
same time enjoying the felicities of urban life, so 
he consented to the use of his horses, but with 
the distinct understanding that he should be 
permitted to drive the hearse! 



179 



The Tired Business Man 

VI 

If we are not, after all, a happy people, in the 
full enjoyment of life and liberty, what is this 
sickness that troubleth our Israel ? Why huddle 
so many captains within the walls of the city, 
impotently whining beside their spears ? Why 
seek so many for rest while this our Israel is 
young among the nations ? " Thou hast multi- 
plied the nation and not increased the joy; 
they joy before thee according to the joy in 
harvest and as men rejoice when they divide 
the spoil." Weariness fell upon Judah, and 
despite the warnings of noble and eloquent 
prophets she perished. It is now a good many 
years since Mr. Arnold cited Isaiah and Plato 
for our benefit to illustrate his belief that with 
us, as with Judah and Athens, the majority are 
unsound. And yet from his essay on Numbers 
— an essay for which Lowell's " Democracy " 
is an excellent antidote — we may turn with a 
feeling of confidence and security to that un- 
tired and unwearying majority which Arnold 
believed to be unsound. Many instances of the 
soundness of our majority have been afforded 

i8o 



The Tired Business Man 

since Mr. Arnold's death, and it is a reason- 
able expectation that, in spite of the apparent 
ease with which the majority may be stam- 
peded, it nevertheless pauses with a safe mar- 
gin between it and the precipice. Illustrations 
of failure abound in history, but the very rise 
and development of our nation has discredited 
History as a prophet. In the multiplication of 
big and little Smiths lies our only serious dan- 
ger. The disposition of the sick Smiths to de- 
plore as unhealthy and unsound such a radical 
movement as began in 1896, and still sweeps 
merrily on in 191 2, never seriously arrests the 
onward march of those who sincerely believe 
that we were meant to be a great refuge for 
mankind. If I must choose, I prefer to take 
my chances with the earnest, healthy, patri- 
otic millions rather than with an oligarchy of 
tired Smiths. Our impatience of the bounds 
of law set by men who died before the Republic 
was born does not justify the whimpering of 
those Smiths who wrap themselves in the grave- 
clothes of old precedents, and who love the 
Constitution only when they fly to it for 
shelter. Tired business men, weary professional 
181 



The Tired Business Man 

men, bored farmers, timorous statesmen are 
not of the vigorous stuff of those 

"Who founded us and spread from sea to sea 
A thousand leagues the zone of liberty, 
And gave to man this refuge from his past, 
Unkinged, unchurched, unsoldiered." 

Our country's only enemies are the sick men, 
the tired men, who have exhausted themselves 
in the vain pursuit of vain things; who forget 
that democracy like Christianity is essentially 
social, and who constitute a sick remnant from 
whom it is devoutly to be hoped the benign 
powers may forever protect us. 

VII 

It was a year ago that I met my old friend 
Smith, irritable, depressed, anxious, in the Ger- 
man capital. This morning we tramped five 
miles, here among the Vermont hills where he 
has established himself. Sound in wind and 
limb is my old neighbor, and his outlook on life 
is sane and reasonable. I have even heard him 
referring, with something of his old emotion, to 
that dark winter at Valley Forge, but with a 
new hopefulness, a wider vision. He does not 
182 



The Tired Business Man 

think the American Republic will perish, even 
as Nineveh and Tyre, any more than I do. He 
has come to a realization of his own errors and 
he is interested in the contemplation of his own 
responsibilities. And it is not the German spe- 
cialist he has to thank for curing his weariness 
half so much as Fanny. 

Fanny! Fanny is the wisest, the most cap- 
able, the healthiest-minded girl in the world. 
Fanny is adorable! As we trudged along the 
road. Smith suddenly paused and lifted his eyes 
to a rough pasture slightly above and beyond 
us. I knew from the sudden light in his face 
that Fanny was in the landscape. She leaped 
upon a wall and waved to us. A cool breeze rose 
from the valley and swept round her. As she 
poised for a moment before running down to 
join us in the road, there was about her some- 
thing of the grace and vigor of the Winged Vic- 
tory as it challenges the eye at the head of the 
staircase in the Louvre. She lifted her hand to 
brush back her hair, — that golden crown so 
loved by light! And as she ran we knew she 
would neither stumble nor fall on that rock- 
strewn pasture. When she reached the brook 
183 



The Tired Business Man 

she took it at a bound, and burst upon us 
radiant. 

It had been Fanny's idea to come here, and 
poor, tired, broken, disconsolate Smith, driven 
desperate by the restrictions imposed upon him 
by the German doctors, and only harassed by 
his wife's fears, had yielded to Fanny's impor- 
tunities. I had been so drawn into their affairs 
that I knew all the steps by which Fanny had 
effected his redemption. She had broken 
through the lines of the Philistines and brought 
him a cup of water from that unquenchable well 
by the gate for which David pined and for 
which we all long when the evil days come. The 
youth of a world that never grows old is in 
Fanny's heart. She is to Smith as a Goddess of 
Liberty in short skirt and sweater, come down 
from her pedestal to lead the way to green pas- 
tures beside waters of comfort. She has become 
to him not merely the spirit of youth but of life, 
and his dependence upon her is complete. It 
was she who saved him from himself when to 
his tired eyes it seemed that 

"All one's work is vain, 
And life goes stretching on, a waste gray plain, 

184 



The Tired Business Man 

with even the short mirage of morning gone, 
No cool breath anywhere, no shadow nigh 
Where a weary man might lay him down and die." 

Later, as we sat on Smith's veranda watching 
the silver trumpet of the young moon be- 
yond the pine-crowned crest, with the herd a 
dark blur in the intervening meadows, and 
sweet clean airs blowing out of the valley, it 
somehow occurred to me that Fanny of the 
adorable head, Fanny gentle of heart, quick 
of wit, and ready of hand, is the fine essence 
of all that is worthiest and noblest in this 
America of ours. In such as she there is both 
inspiration to do and the wisdom of peace and 
rest. As she sits brooding with calm brows, a 
quiet hand against her tanned cheek, I see in 
her the likeness of a goddess sprung of loftier 
lineage than Olympus knew, for in her abides 
the spirit of that old and new America that 
labors in the sun and whose faith is in the stars. 



The Spirit of Mischief: 
A Dialogue 



The Spirit of Mischief: 
A Dialogue 

If I could find a higher tree 
Farther and farther I should see, 
To where the grown-up river slips 
Into the sea among the ships. 

To where the roads on either hand 
Lead onward into fairyland, 
Where all the children dine at five. 
And all the playthings come alive. 

R. L. S. 

JESSAMINE and I had been out sailing. We 
came back to find the house deserted, 
and after foraging in the pantry, we made 
ourselves at home in the long unceiled living- 
room, which is one of the pleasantest lounging- 
places in the world. A few pine-knots were 
smouldering jn the fireplace, and, as I have 
reached an age when it is pleasant to watch 
the flames, I poked a little life into the embers 
and sat down to contemplate them from the 
easiest chair the camp afforded. Jessamine 
189 



The Spirit of Mischief 

wearily cast herself upon the couch near by 
without taking off her coat. 

Jessamine is five and does as she likes, and 
does it perversely, arbitrarily, and gracefully, 
in the way of maids of five. In the pantry she 
had found her way to marmalade with an ease 
and certainty that amazed me; and she had, 
with malice aforethought, made me particeps 
criminis by teaching me how to coax reluctant, 
tight-fitting olives from an impossible bottle 
with an oyster-fork. 

Jessamine is difficult. I thought of it now 
with a pang, as her brown curls lay soft against 
a red cushion and she crunched a biscuit, heav- 
ily stuccoed with marmalade, with her little 
popcorn teeth. I have wooed her with bonbons ; 
I have bribed her with pennies; but indifference 
and disdain are still my portion. To-day was 
my opportunity. The rest of the household had 
gone to explore the village bazaars, and we were 
left alone. It was not that she loved me more, 
but the new nurse less ; and, as sailing had usu- 
ally been denied her, she derived from our few 
hours in my catboat the joy of a clandestine 
adventure. We had never been so much to- 
190 



The Spirit of Mischief 

gether before. I wondered how long the spell of 
our sail would last. Probably, I reflected, until 
the wanderers came back from town to afford a 
new diversion ; or until her nurse came to carry 
her away to tea. For the moment, however, I 
felt secure. The fire snapped; the clock ticked 
insistently; my face burned from its recent 
contact with a sharp west wind, which had 
brought white caps to the surface of the lake 
and a pleasant splash to the beach at our front 
door. Jessamine folded her arms, rested her 
head upon them, and regarded me lazily. She 
was slim and lean of limb, and the lines she 
made on the couch were long. I tried to re- 
member whether I had ever seen her still before. 

."You may read, if you like," she said. 

"Thank you ; but I 'd rather have you tell me 
things," I answered. 

I wished to be conciliatory. At any moment, 
I knew she might rise and vanish. My tricks of 
detention had proved futile a thousand times; I 
was always losing her. She was a master oppor- 
tunist. She had, I calculated, a mood a minute, 
and the mood of inaction was not often one of 
them. 

191 



The Spirit of Mischief 

"There are many, many things I'd like to 
have you tell me, Mischief," I said. "What 
do you think of when you 're all alone; what do 
you think of me?" 

"Oh! I never think of you when I'm all 
alone." 

"Thank you, Mischief. But I wonder 
whether you are quite frank. You must think of 
me sometimes. For example, — where were 
you when you thought of knotting my neckties 
all together, no longer ago than yesterday?" 

"Oh ! " (It is thus she begins many sentences. 
Her "Ohs" are delightfully equivocal.) 

"Perhaps you'd rather not tell. Of course, 
I don't mind about the ties." 

"It was nice of you — not to mind." 

Suddenly her blue eyes ceased to be. They 
are little pools of blue, like mountain lakes. I 
was aware that the dark lashes had stolen down 
upon her brown cheek. She opened her eyes 
again instantly. 

" I wish I had n't found your ties. Finding 
them made a lot of trouble for me. I was look- 
ing for your funny little scissors to open the 
door of my doll-house that was stuck, and I saw 
192 



The Spirit of Mischief 

the ties. Then I remembered that I needed a 
rope to tie Adolphus — that's the woolly dog 
you bought for my birthday — to my bed at 
night; and neckties make very good ropes." 

"I'm glad to hear it, Mischief." 

"There's a prayer they say in church about 
mischief — " she began sleepily. 

"'From all evil and mischief; from sin; from 
the crafts and assaults of the Devil ? ' " I quoted. 

"That is it! and there's something in it, too, 
about everlasting damnation, that always sends 
shivers down my back." 

She frowned in a puzzled way. I remembered 
that once, when Jessamine and I went to church 
together, she had, during the reading of the 
litany, so moved a silk hat on the next seat that 
its owner crushed it hideously when he rose 
from his knees. 

The black lashes hid the blue eyes once more, 
and she settled her head snugly into her folded 
arms. 

"Why," she murmured, "do you call me 
Mischief? I'm not Mischief; I'm Jessamine." 

"You are the Spirit of Mischief," I answered; 
and she made no reply. 

.193 



The Spirit of Mischief 

The water of the lake beat the shore stormlly. 

"The Spirit of Mischief ." 

Jessamine repeated the words sleepily. I had 
never thought of them seriously before, and had 
applied them to her thoughtlessly. Is there, I 
asked myself, a whimsical spirit that possesses 
the heart of a child, — something that is too 
swift for the slow pace of adult minds; and if 
there be such, where is its abiding-place? 

"I'm the Spirit of Mischief!" 

There, with her back to the fire, stood Jes- 
samine, but with a difference. Her fists were 
thrust deep down into the pockets of her coat. 
There was a smile on her face that I did not 
remember to have seen before. The wind had 
blown her hair into a sorry tangle, and it was 
my fault — I should have made her wear her 
tam-o'-shanter in the catboat! An uncle may 
mean well, but, after all, he is no fit substitute 
for a parent. 

" So you admit it, do you ? It is unlike you to 
make concessions." 

"You use long words. Uncles always use long 
words. It is one of the most foolish things they 
do." 

194. 



The Spirit of Mischief 

"I'm sorry. I wish very much not to be 
foolish or naughty." 

"I have wished that many times," she re- 
turned gravely. "But naughtiness and mis- 
chief are not the same thing." 

"I believe that is so," I answered. "But if 
you are really the Spirit of Mischief, — and far 
be it from me to doubt your word, — where is 
your abiding-place.? Spirits must have abiding- 
places." 

"There are many of them, and they area long 
way off. One is where the four winds meet." 

"But that — that isn't telling. Nobody 
knows where that is." 

"Everybody does n't," said the Spirit of 
Mischief gently, as one who would deal for- 
bearingly with dullness. 

"Tell me something easier," I begged. 

"Well, I'll try again," she said. "Sometimes 
when I 'm not where four winds meet, I 'm at 
the end of all the rainbows. Do you know that 
place?" 

"I never heard of it. Is it very far away?" 

"It's farther than anything — farther even 
than the place where the winds meet." 

195 



The Spirit of Mischief 

"And what do you do there ? You must have 
bags and bags of gold, O Spirit." 

"Yes. Of course. I practice hiding things 
with them. That is why no one ever found a 
bag of gold at the end of a rainbow. I have put 
countless ones in the cave of lost treasure. 
There are a great many things there besides 
the bags of gold, — things that parents, and 
uncles, and aunts lose, — and never find any 
more." 

"I wish I could visit the place," I said with a 
sigh. " It would be pleasant to see a storehouse 
like that. It would have, I may say, a strong 
personal interest. Only yesterday I contributed 
a valued scarf-pin through the agency of a 
certain mischievous niece; and I shall be long 
in recovering from the loss of that miraculous 
putter that made me a terror on the links. My 
golf can never be the same again." 

"But you never can see the place," she de- 
clared. "A time comes when you can't find it 
any more, the cave of lost treasure — or the 
place where four winds meet — or the end of all 
the rainbows." 

"I suppose I have lost my chance," I said. 
196 



The Spirit of Mischief 

"Oh, long ago!" exclaimed the Spirit dis- 
dainfully. "It never lasts beyond six!" 

"That has a wise sound. Pray tell me more! 
Tell me, I beg, how you have endured this 
harsh world so long." 

This, I thought, was a poser; but she an- 
swered readily enough. 

" I suppose, because I am kindred of so many, 
many things that live on forever. There are the 
colors on water when the sun strikes it through 
clouds. It can be green and gold and blue and 
silver all at once; and then there is the foam of 
the white caps. It is foam for a moment and 
then it is just water again. And there is the 
moonlight on rippling water, that goes away 
and never comes any more — not just the same. 
The mirth in the heart of a child is like all these 
things; and the heart of a child is the place I 
love best." 

"Yes," I said. " I 'm sure it is better than the 
place where all the winds meet, or that other 
rainbow-place that you told me about." 

"And then," she began again, "you know 
that children say things sometimes just in fun, 
but no one ever seems to understand that." 

197 



The Spirit of Mischief 

"To be sure," I said feelingly, remembering 
how Jessamine loved to tease and plague 
me. 

"But there Is n't any harm in it — any more 
than—" 

"Yes ? " a little impatiently. 

"Than in the things the pines say when the 
wind runs over the top of them. They are not 
■ — not important, exactly, — but they are al- 
ways different. That is the best thing about 
being a child — the being different part. You 
have a grown-up word that means always just 
the same." 

"Consistent?" I asked. 

"That is it. A child that is consistent Is 
wrong some way. But I don't remember having 
seen any of that kind." 

A smile that was not the smile of Jessamine 
stole Into the Spirit's face. It disconcerted me. 
I could not, for the life of me, decide how much 
of the figure before me was Jessamine and how 
much was really the Spirit of Mischief, or 
whether they were both the same. 

"Being ignorant, you don't know what the 
mirth In a child is — you" (scornfully) "who 

198 



The Spirit of Mischief 

pretend to measure all people by their sense of 
humor. It's akin to the bubbling music of the 
fountain of youth, and you do the child and the 
world a wrong when you stifle it. A child's glee 
is as natural as sunshine, and carries no burden 
of knowledge; and that is the precious thing 
about it." 

" I 'm sure that is true," I said; but the Spirit 
did not heed me. She went on, in a voice that 
suggested Jessamine, but was not hers. 

"Many people talk solemnly about the imagi- 
nation of children, as though it were a thing 
that could be taught from books or prepared in 
laboratories. But children's mischief, that is so 
often complained of, is the imaginations' finest 
flower." 

"The idea pleases me. I shall make a note 
of it." 

"The very day," continued the Spirit, "that 
you sat at table and talked learnedly about the 
minds of children and how to promote in them 
a love of the beautiful, your Jessamine had 
known a moment of joy. She had lain in the 
meadow and watched the thistledown take 
flight, — a myriad of those flimsy argosies. 
199 



The Spirit of Mischief 

And she had fashioned a story about them, that 
they rise skyward to become the stuff that 
white clouds are made of. And the same day 
she asked you to tell her what it is the robins 
are so sorry about when they sing in the evening 
after the other birds have gone. Now the same 
small head that thought of those things con- 
trived also the happy idea of cooking a doll's 
dinner in the chafing dish, — an experiment 
that resulted, as you may remember, in a visit 
from both the doctor and the fire-insurance 
adjuster." 

My heart was wrung as I recalled the band- 
ages on Jessamine's slender brown arms. 

"Yes, O Spirit!" I said. "I'm learning 
much. Pray tell me more!" 

"We like very much for science to let us 
alone — " 

"But hygiene — and all those life-saving 
things — " 

"Oh, yes," she said patronizingly; "they're 
all very well in their way. It 's better for science 
to kill bugs than for the bugs to kill children. 
But I mean other kinds of sciences that are not 
nearly so useful — pedagogical and the like,. 
206 



The Spirit of Mischief 

that are trying to kill the microbe of play. 
Leave us, oh, leave us that ! " 

"That is a new way of putting it. We old- 
sters soon forget how to play, alackaday!" 

She went on calmly. "Work that you really 
love is n't work any more — it's play." 

"That's a little deep for me — " 

"It's true, though, so you'd better try to 
understand. If you paint a picture and work at 
it, — slave over it and are not happy doing it, 
— then your picture is only so many pennies' 
worth of paint. The cruelest thing people can 
say of a book or a picture is, * Well, he worked 
hard at it!' The spirit of mischief is only the 
spirit of play; and the spirit of play is really the 
spirit of the work we love." 

" It's too bad that you are not always patient 
with us," the Spirit continued. (I note4 the 
plural. Clearly Jessamine and the Spirit were 
one!) 

"I'm sorry, too," I answered contritely. 

"The laws of the foolish world do not apply 
to childhood at all. Children are born Into a 
condition of ideality. They view everything 
with wonder and awe, and you and all the rest 

201 



The Spirit of Mischief 

of the grown-up world are busy spoiling their 
illusions. How happy you would be if you could 
have gone on blowing bubbles all your days ! " 

"True, alas, too true!" 

The face of the Spirit grew suddenly very old. 

"Life," she said, "consists largely in having 
to accept the fact that we cannot do the things 
we want to do. But in the blessed days of mis- 
chief we blow bubbles in forbidden soap and 
water with contraband pipes — and do not 
know that they are bubbles!" 

"That is the fine thing about it, O Spirit — 
the sweet ignorance of it! I hope I understand 
that." 

i "I see that you are really wiser than you have 
always seemed," she said, with her baffling 
smile. "Mischief, as you are prone to call so 
many things that children do, is as wholesome 
and sweet as a field of clover. I, the Spirit of 
Mischief, have a serious business in the world, 
which I'll tell you about, as you are old and 
know so little. I 'm here to combat and confuse 
the evil spirits that seek to stifle the good cheer 
of childhood. These little children that always 
go to bed without a fuss and say good night 

202 



The Spirit of Mischief 

very sweetly in French, and never know bread 
and butter and jam by their real names — you 
really do not like them half as well as you like 
natural children. You remember that you 
laughed when Jessamine's French governess 
came, and left the second day because the black 
cat got into her trunk. There was really no 
harm in thatl" 

The Spirit of Mischief laughed. She grew 
very small, and I watched her curiously, won- 
dering whether she was really a creature of this 
work-a-day world. Then suddenly she grew to 
life-size again, and laughed gleefully, standing 
with her hands thrust d.eep into her coat pockets. 

"Jessamine!" I exclaimed. "I thought you 
were asleep." 

"I was, a little bit; but you — you snored 
awfully," she said, "and waked me up." 

She still watched me, laughing; and looking 
down I saw that she had been busy while I 
slept. A barricade of books had been built 
around me, — a carefully wrought bit of ma- 
sonry, as high as my knees. 

"You're the wicked giant," declared Jes- 
samine, quite in her own manner, and with no 
203 



The Spirit of Mischief 

hint of the half-real, elfish spirit of my dream. 
"And I'm the good little Princess that has 
caught you at last. And I '11 never let you out 
of the tower — Oh they 're coming! They 're 
coming!" 

She flashed to the door and out upon the 
veranda where steps had sounded, leaving me 
to deliver myself from the tower of the Spirit 
of Mischief with the ignorant hands of Age. 



Confessions of a "Best-Seller" 



Confessions of a ** Best- 
Seller" 

THAT my name has adorned best-selling 
lists is more of a joke than my harshest 
critics can imagine. I had dallied awhile at the 
law; I had given ten full years to journalism; 
I had written criticism, and not a little verse; 
two or three short stories of the slightest had 
been my only adventure in fiction; and I had 
spent a year writing an essay in history, which, 
from the publisher's reports, no one but my 
neighbor and my neighbor's wife ever read. My 
frugal output of poems had pleased no one half 
so much as myself; and having reached years of 
discretion I carefully analyzed samples of the 
ore that remained in my bins, decided that I 
had exhausted my poetical vein, and thereupon 
turned rather soberly to the field of fiction. 

In order to qualify myself to speak to my 
text, I will say that in a period of six years, that 
closed in January, 1909, my titles were included 
207 



Confessions of a Best-Seller 

fifteen times in the "Bookman" list of best- 
selling books. Two of my titles appeared five 
times each; one of them headed the list three 
months successively. I do not presume to speak 
for others with whom I have crossed swords in 
the best-selling lists, but I beg to express my 
strong conviction that the compilation of such 
statistics is quite as injurious as it is helpful to 
authors. When the "six best-selling" phrase 
was new the monthly statement of winners 
may have carried som^ weight; but for several 
years it has really had little significance. Criti- 
cal purchasers are likely to be wary of books 
so listed. It is my impression, based on talks 
with retail dealers in many parts of the coun- 
try, that they often report as "best-sellers" 
books of which they may have made large ad- 
vance purchases, but which are selling slowly. 
Their aim is, of course, to force the book into 
the list, and thereby create a false impression 
of its popularity. 

I think that most publishers, and many 

authors who, like myself, have profited by the 

making of these lists, would gladly see them 

discontinued. The fact remains, however, that 

208 



Confessions of a Best-Seller 

the best novels by the best English and Ameri- 
can writers have generally been included in 
these lists. Mrs. Wharton, Mrs. Ward, Mr. 
Winston Churchill, Mr. Wister, "Kate Douglas 
Wiggin," Miss Johnston, and Mr. William de 
Morgan have, for example, shared with in- 
ferior writers the ignominy of popular success. 
I do not believe that my American fellow citi- 
zens prefer trash to sound literature. There are 
not enough novels of the first order, not enough 
books of the style and solidity of "The House 
of Mirth" and "Joseph Vance," to satisfy the 
popular demand for fiction; and while the peo- 
ple wait, they take inferior books, like several 
bearing my own name, which have no aim but 
to amuse. I know of nothing more encouraging 
to those who wish to see the American novel go 
high and far than the immediate acceptance 
among us of the writings of Mr. William de 
Morgan, who makes no concession, not even of 
brevity, to the ever-increasing demand for 
fiction. 

I spent the greater part of two years on my 
first novel, which dealt with aspects of life in an 
urban community which interested me; and the 
209 



Confessions of a Best-Seller 

gravest fault of the book, if I am entitled to an 
opinion, is its self-consciousness, — I was too 
anxious, too painstaking, with the result that 
those pages seem frightfully stiff to me now. 
The book was launched auspiciously; my pub- 
lisher advertised it generously, and it landed 
safely among the "six best-sellers." The critical 
reception of the book was cordial and friendly, 
not only in the newspaper press, but in the 
more cautious weekly journals. My severest 
critic dealt far more amiably with my book than 
I should have done myself, if I had sat in judg- 
ment upon it. I have been surprised to find the 
book still remembered, and its quality has been 
flung in my face by critics who have deplored 
my later performances. 

I now wrote another novel, to which I gave 
even greater care, and into it I put, I think, 
the best characterizations I have ever done; 
but the soupqon of melodrama with which I 
flavored the first novel was lacking in the se- 
cond, and it went dead a little short of fifteen 
thousand — the poorest sale any of my books 
has had. 

A number of my friends were, at this time, 

210 



Confessions of a Best-Seller 

rather annoyingly directing my attention to the 
great popular successes of several other Ameri- 
can writers, whose tales were, I felt, the most 
contemptible pastiche, without the slightest 
pretense to originality, and having neither form 
nor style. It was in some bitterness of spirit 
that I resolved to try my hand at a story that 
should be a story and nothing else. Nor should 
I storm the capitals of imaginary kingdoms, but 
set the scene on my own soil. Most, it was clear, 
could grow the flowers of Zenda when once the 
seed had been scattered by Mr. Hawkins. 
Whether Mr. Hawkins got his inspiration from 
the flora of Prince Otto's gardens, and whether 
the Prince was indebted in his turn to Harry 
Richmond, is not my affair. I am, no doubt, 
indebted to all three of these creations; but 
I set my scene In an American commonwealth, 
a spot that derived nothing from historical as- 
sociation, and sent my hero on his adventures 
armed with nothing more deadly than a suit- 
case and an umbrella. The idea is not original 
with me that you can make anything Interest- 
ing if you know how. It was Stevenson, I be- 
lieve, who said that a kitchen table is a fair 

211 



Confessions of a Best-Seller 

enough subject for any writer who knows his 
trade. I do not cite myself as a person capable 
of proving this; but I am satisfied that the chief 
fun of story-telling lies in trying, by all the 
means in a writer's power, to make plausible the 
seemingly impossible. And here, of course, I 
am referring to the story for the story's sake, — 
not to the novel of life and manners. 

My two earliest books were clearly too de- 
liberate. They were deficient in incident, and 
I was prone to wander into blind alleys, and not 
always ingenious enough to emerge again upon 
the main thoroughfare. I felt that, while I 
might fail in my attempt to produce a romantic 
yarn, the experience might help me to a better 
understanding of the mechanics of the novel, — 
that I might gain directness, movement, and 
ease. 

For my third venture I hit upon a device 
that took strong hold upon my imagination. 
The idea of laying a trap for the reader tickled 
me ; and when once I had written the first chap- 
ter and outlined the last, I yielded myself to the 
story and bade it run its own course. I was 
never more honestly astonished in my life than 

212 



Confessions of a Best-Seller 

to find my half-dozen characters taking matters 
into their own hands, and leaving me the merest 
spectator and reporter. I had made notes for 
the story, but in looking them over to-day, I 
find that I made practically no use of them. I 
never expect to experience again the delight of 
the winter I spent over that tale. The sight of 
white paper had no terrors for me. The hero, 
constantly cornered, had always in his pocket 
the key to his successive dilemmas; the heroine, 
misunderstood and misjudged, was struck at 
proper intervals by the spot-light that revealed 
her charm and reestablished faith in her honor- 
able motives. No other girl in my little gallery 
of heroines exerts upon me the spell of that 
young lady, who, on the day I began the story, 
as I waited for the ink to thaw in my workshop, 
passed under my window, by one of those 
kindly orderings of Providence that keep alive 
the superstition of inspiration in the hearts 
of all fiction-writers. She never came my way 
again — but she need not! She was the bright 
particular star of my stage — its dea ex ma- 
china. She is of the sisterhood of radiant god- 
desses who are visible from any window, even 
213 



Confessions of a Best-Seller 

though its prospect be only a commonplace city 
street. Always, and everywhere, the essential 
woman for any tale is passing by with grave 
mien, if the tale be sober; with upturned chin 
and a saucy twinkle in the eye, if such be the 
seeker's need! 

I think I must have begun every morning's 
work with a grin on my face, for it was all fun, 
and I entered with zest into all the changes and 
chances of the story. I was embarrassed, not 
by any paucity of incident, but by my own 
fecundity and dexterity. The audacity of my 
project used sometimes to give me pause; it was 
almost too bold a thing to carry through; but 
my curiosity as to just how the ultimate goal 
would be reached kept my interest keyed high. 
At times, feeling that I was going too fast, I 
used to halt and write a purple patch or two 
for my own satisfaction, — a harmless diver- 
sion to which I am prone, and which no one 
could be cruel enough to deny me. There are 
pages in that book over which I dallied for a 
week, and in looking at them now I find that 
I still think them — as Mr. James would say — 
"rather nice." And once, while thus amusing 
214 



Confessions of a Best-Seller 

myself, a phrase slipped from the pen which 
I saw at once had been, from all time, ordained 
to be the title of my book. 

When I had completed the first draft, I began 
retouching. I liked my tale so much that I was 
reluctant to part with it; I enjoyed playing 
with it, and I think I rewrote the most of it 
three times. Contumelious critics have spoken 
of me as one of the typewriter school of fiction- 
ists, picturing me as lightly flinging off a few 
chapters before breakfast, and spending the 
rest of the day on the golf-links; but I have 
never in my life written in a first draft more 
than a thousand words a day, and I have fre- 
quently thrown away a day's work when I 
came to look it over. I have refused enough 
offers for short stories, serials, and book rights, 
to have kept half a dozen typewriters busy, and 
my output has not been large, considering that 
writing has been, for nearly ten years, my only 
occupation. I can say, with my hand on my 
heart, that I have written for my own pleasure 
first and last, and that those of my books that 
have enjoyed the greatest popularity were 
written really in a spirit of play, without any 

215 



Confessions of a Best-Seller 

Illusions as to their Importance or their quick 
and final passing Into the void. 

When I had finished my story, I still had a 
few Incidents and scenes In my Ink-pot; but I 
could not for the life of me get the curtain up, 
once It was down. My little drama had put It- 
self together as tight as wax, and even when I 
had written an additional Incident that pleased 
me particularly, I could find no place to thrust 
It In. I was Interested chiefly In amusing my- 
self, and I never troubled myself In the least as 
to whether anyone else would care for the story. 
I was astonished by Its sale, which exceeded a 
quarter of a million copies In this country; It 
has been translated Into French, Italian, Ger- 
man, Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian. I have 
heard of It all the way from Tokyo to Teheran. 
It was dramatized, and an actor of distinction 
appeared In the stage version; and stock com- 
panies have lately presenlied the play In Boston 
and San Francisco. It was subsequently serial- 
ized by newspapers, and later appeared In 
"patent" supplements. The title was para- 
phrased by advertisers, several of whom con- 
tinue to pay me this flattering tribute. 
216 



Confessions of a Best-Seller 

I have speculated a good deal as to the suc- 
cess of this book. The title had, no doubt, 
much to do with it; clever advertising helped it 
further; the cover was a lure to the eye. The 
name of a popular illustrator may have helped, 
but it is certain that his pictures did not! I 
think I am safe in saying that the book received 
no helpful reviews in any newspapers of the 
first class, and I may add that I am skeptical as 
to the value of favorable notices in stimulating 
the sale of such books. Serious novels are un- 
doubtedly helped by favorable reviews; stories 
of the kind I describe depend primarily upon 
persistent and ingenious advertising, in which 
a single striking line from the "Gem City 
Evening Gazette" is just as valuable as the 
opinion of the most scholarly review. Nor am I 
unmindful of the publisher's labors and risks, — 
the courage, confidence, and genius essential to 
a successful campaign with a book from a new 
hand, with no prestige of established reputa- 
tion to command instant recognition. The self- 
selling book may become a "best-seller"; it 
may appear mysteriously, a "dark horse" in 
the eternal battle of the books; but miracles are 
217 



Confessions of a Best-Seller 

as rare in the book trade as in other lines of 
commerce. The man behind the counter is 
another important factor. The retail dealer, 
when he finds the publisher supporting him 
with advertising, can do much to prolong a sale. 
A publisher of long experience in promoting 
large sales has told me that advertising is valu- 
able chiefly for its moral effect on the retailer, 
who, feeling that the publisher is strongly back- 
ing a book, bends his own energies toward 
keeping it alive. 

It would be absurd for me to pretend that the 
leap from a mild succes d'estime with sales of 
forty and fourteen thousand, to a delirious 
gallop into six figures is not without its effect on 
an author, unless he be much less human than 
I am. Those gentle friends who had intimated 
that I could not do it once, were equally san- 
guine that I could not do it again. The tempta- 
tion to try a second throw of the dice after a 
success is strong, but I debated long whether 
I should try my hand at a second romance. I 
resolved finally to do a better book in the same 
kind, and with even more labor I produced a 
yarn whose title — and the gods have several 
2i8 



Confessions of a Best-Seller 

times favored me in the matter of titles — 
adorned the best-selling lists for an even 
longer period, though the total sales aggregated 
less. 

The second romance was, I think, better than 
the first, and its dramatic situations were more 
picturesque. The reviews averaged better in 
better places, and may have aroused the preju- 
dices of those who shun books that are counte- 
nanced or praised by the literary "high brows." 
It sold largely; it enjoyed the glory and the 
shame of a "best-seller"; but here, I pon- 
dered, was the time to quit. Not to shock my 
"audience," to use the term of the trade, I 
resolved to try for more solid ground by paying 
more attention to characterizations, and cut- 
ting down the allowance of blood and thunder. 
I expected to lose heavily with the public, and 
I was not disappointed. I crept into the best- 
selling list, but my sojourn there was brief. It 
is manifest that people who like shots in the 
dark will not tamely acquiesce in the mild plac- 
ing of the villain's hand upon his hip pocket on 
the moon-washed terrace. The difference be- 
tween the actual shot and the mere menace, I 
219 



Confessions of a Best-Seller 

could, from personal knowledge, compute in the 
coin of the Republic. 

When your name on the bill-board suggests 
battle, murder, and sudden death, "hair- 
breadth 'scapes, i' th' imminent deadly breach," 
and that sort of thing, you need not be cha- 
grined if, once inside, the eager throng resents 
bitterly your perfidy in offering nothing more 
blood-curdling than the heroine's demand (the 
scene being set for five o'clock tea) for another 
lump of sugar. You may, if you please, leave 
Hamlet out of his own play; but do not, on 
peril of your fame, cut out your ghost, or ne- 
glect to provide some one to stick a sword into 
Polonius behind the arras. I can take up that 
particular book now and prove to any fair- 
minded man how prettily I could, by injecting 
a little paprika into my villains, have quad- 
rupled its sale. 

Having, I hope, some sense of humor, I re- 
solved to bid farewell to cloak and pistols in a 
farce-comedy, which should be a take-oif on my 
own popular performances. Humor being some- 
thing that no one should tamper with who is 
not ready for the gibbet, I was not surprised 
220 



Confessions of a Best-Seller 

that many hasty samplers of the book should 
entirely miss the joke, or that a number of joy- 
less critics should have dismissed it hastily as 
merely another machine-made romance written 
for boarding-school girls and the weary com- 
mercial traveler yawning In the smoking-car. 
Yet this book also has been a "best-seller"! I 
have seen it, within a few weeks, prominently 
displayed in bookshop windows In half a dozen 
cities. 

It was, I think, Mr. Clyde Fitch who first 
voiced the complaint that our drama Is seri- 
ously affected by the demand of "the tired 
business man" to be amused at the theatre. 
The same may be said of fiction. A very con- 
siderable number of our toiling millions sit 
down wearily at night, and if the evening paper 
does not fully satisfy or social diversion offer, a 
story that will hold the attention without too 
great a tax upon the mind Is welcomed. I 
should be happy to think that our ninety mil- 
lions trim the lamp every evening with zest 
for "Improving" literature; but the tired brain 
follows the line of least resistance, which un- 
fortunately does not lead to alcoyes where the 

221 



Confessions of a Best-Seller 

one hundred best books wear their purple in 
solemn pomp. Even in my present mood of 
contrition, I am not sneering at that consider- 
able body of my countrymen who have laid 
one dollar and eighteen cents upon the counter 
and borne home my little fictions. They took 
grave chances of my boring them; and when 
they rapped a second time on the counter and 
murmured another of my titles, they were ex- 
pressing a confidence in me which I strove 
hard never to betray. 

No one will, I am sure, deny me the satisfac- 
tion I have in the reflection that I put a good 
deal of sincere work into those stories, — for 
they are stories, not novels, and were written 
frankly to entertain; that they are not wholly 
ill-written; that they contain pages that are not 
without their grace; or that there is nothing 
prurient or morbid in any of them. And no 
matter how jejune stories of the popular ro- 
mantic type may be, — a fact, O haughty 
critic, of which I am well aware, — I take some 
satisfaction as a good American in the know- 
ledge that, in spite of their worthlessness as 
literature, they are essentially clean. The 

222 



Confessions of a Best-Selier 

heroes may be too handsome, and too sure of 
themselves; the heroines too adorable in their 
sweet distress, as they wave the white handker- 
chief from the grated window of the ivied tower, 
— but their adventures are, in the very nature 
of things, in usum Delphini. 

Some of my friends of the writing guild boast 
that they never read criticisms of their work. I 
have read and filed all the notices of my stories 
that bore any marks of honesty or intelligence. 
Having served my own day as reviewer for a 
newspaper, I know the dreary drudgery of such 
work. I recall, with shame, having averaged a 
dozen books an afternoon; and some of my 
critics have clearly averaged two dozen, with 
my poor candidates for oblivion at the bottom 
of the heap ! Much American criticism is stupid 
or ignorant; but the most depressing, from my 
standpoint, is the flippant sort of thing which 
many newspapers print habitually. The stage, 
also, suffers like treatment, even in some of the 
more reputable metropolitan journals. Unless 
your book affords a text for a cynical newspaper 
"story," it is quite likely to be ignored. 

I cannot imagine that any writer who takes 
223 



Confessions of a Best-Seller 

his calling seriously ever resents a sincere, intel- 
ligent, adverse notice. I have never written a 
book in less than a year, devoting all my time to 
it; and I resent being dismissed in a line, and 
called a writer of drivel, by some one who did 
not take the trouble to say why. A newspaper 
which is particularly jealous of its good name 
once pointed out with elaborate care that an 
incident, described in one of my stories as oc- 
curring in broad daylight, could not have been 
observed in moonlight by one of the characters 
at the distance I had indicated. The same re- 
viewer transferred the scene of this story half- 
way across the continent, in order to make an- 
other point against its plausibility. If the aim 
of criticism be to aid the public in its choice of 
books, then the press should deal fairly with 
both author and public. And if the critics wish 
to point out to authors their failures and weak- 
nesses, then it should be done in a spirit of 
justice. The best-selling of my books caused a 
number of critics to remark that it had clearly 
been inspired by a number of old romances — 
which I had not only never read, but of several 
of them I had never even heard, 
224 



Confessions of a Best-Seller 

A Boston newspaper which I greatly admire 
once published an editorial in which I was pillo- 
ried as a type of writer who basely commer- 
cializes his talent. It was a cruel stab; for, 
unlike my heroes, I do not wear a mail-shirt 
under my dress-coat. Once, wandering into a 
church in my own city, at a time when a drama- 
tized version of one of my stories was offered 
at a local theatre, I listened to a sermon that 
dealt in the harshest terms with such fiction 
and drama. 

Extravagant or ignorant praise is, to most of 
us, as disheartening as stupid and unjust crit- 
icism. The common practice of invoking great 
names to praise some new arrival at the portal 
of fame cannot fail to depress the subject of it. 
When my first venture in fiction was flatter- 
ingly spoken of by a journal which takes its 
criticisms seriously as evidencing the qualities 
that distinguish Mr. Howells, I shuddered at 
the hideous injustice to a gentleman for whom 
I have the greatest love and reverence; and 
when, in my subsequent experiments, a critic 
somewhere gravely (it seemed, at least, to be in 
a spirit of sobriety!) asked whether a fold of 

225 



Confessions of a Best-Seller 

Stevenson's mantle had not wrapped itself 
about me, the awfulness of the thing made me 
ill, and I fled from felicity until my publisher 
had dropped the heart-breaking phrase from 
his advertisements. For I may be the worst 
living author, and at times I am convinced of 
it; but I hope I am not an immitigable and 
irreclaimable ass. 

American book reviewers, I am convinced 
from a study of my returns from the clipping 
bureaus for ten years, dealing with my offerings 
in two kinds of fiction, are a solid phalanx of 
realists where they are anything at all. This 
attitude is due, I imagine, to the fact that jour- 
nalism deals, or is supposed to deal, with facts. 
Realism is certainly more favorably received 
than romance. I cheerfully subscribe to the 
doctrine that fiction that lays strong hands 
upon aspects of life as we are living it is a nobler 
achievement than tales that provide merely an 
evening's entertainment. Mr. James has, how- 
ever, simplified this whole question. He says, 
"The only classification of the novel that I can 
understand is into that which has life, and that 
which has it not"; and if we must reduce this 
226 



Confessions of a Best-Seller 

matter of fiction to law, his dictum might well 
be accepted as the first and last canon. And 
in this connection I should like to record my 
increasing admiration for all that Mr. James 
has written of novels and novelists. In one 
place and another he has expressed himself 
fully and confidently on fiction as a depart- 
ment of literature. The lecture on Balzac that 
he gave in this country a few years ago is a 
masterly and authoritative document on the 
novel in general. His " Partial Portraits " is a 
rich mine of ripe observation on the distin- 
guishing qualities of a number of his contem- 
poraries, and the same volume contains a 
suggestive and stimulating essay on fiction as 
an art. With these in mind it seems to me a 
matter for tears that Mr. James, with his 
splendid equipment and beautiful genius, 
should have devoted himself so sedulously, in 
his own performances in fiction, to the con- 
templation of cramped foreign vistas and 
exotic types, when all this wide, surging, 
eager, laboring America lay ready to his hand. 
I will say of myself that I value style be- 
yond most things; and that if I could command 
227 



Confessions of a Best-Seller 

It, I should be glad to write for so small an 
audience, the "fit though few," that the best- 
selling lists should never know me again; for 
with style go many of the requisites of great 
fiction, — fineness and sureness of feeling, and a 
power over language by which characters cease 
to be bobbing marionettes and become veritable 
beings, no matter whether they are Beatrix 
Esmonds, or strutting D'Artagnans, or rascally 
Bartley Hubbards, or luckless Lily Barts. To 
toss a ball into the air, and keep it there, as 
Stevenson did so charmingly in such pieces as 
"Providence and the Guitar," — this is a 
respectable achievement; to mount Roy Rich- 
mond as an equestrian statue, — that, too, is 
something we would not have had Mr. Mere- 
dith leave undone. Mr. Rassendyll, an English 
gentleman playing at being king, thrills the 
surviving drop of medisevalism that is in all of 
us. "The tired business man" yields himself to 
the belief that the staccato of hoofs on the 
asphalt street, which steals In to him faintly at 
his fireside, is really an accompaniment to the 
hero's mad ride to save the king. Ah, the joy 
in kings dies hard in us! 
228 



Confessions of a Best-Seller 

Given a sprightly tale with a lost message to 
recover, throw In a fight on the stair, scatter 
here and there pretty dialogues between the 
lover and the princess he serves, and we are all, 
as we breathlessly follow, the rankest royalists. 
Tales of real Americans, kodaked "in the sun's 
hot eye," much as they refresh me, — I speak 
of myself now, not as a writer or critic, but as 
the man in the street, — never so completely 
detach the weary spirit from mundane things 
as tales of events that never were on sea or land. 
Why should I read of Silas Lapham to-night, 
when only an hour ago I was his competitor in 
the mineral-paint business? The greatest fic- 
tion must be a criticism of life; but there are 
times when we crave forgetfulness, and lift our 
eyes trustfully to the flag of Zenda. 

But the creator of Zenda, It is whispered. Is 
not an author of the first or even of the second 
rank, and the adventure story, at its best. Is 
only for the second table. I am quite aware of 
this. But pause a moment, O cheerless one! 
Surely Homer Is respectable; and the Iliad, the 
most strenuous, the most glorious and sublime 
of fictions, with the very gods drawn Into the 
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Confessions of a Best-Seller 

moving scenes, has, by reason of its tremendous 
energy and its tumultuous drama, not less than 
for its majesty as literature, established its 
right to be called the longest-selling fiction of 
the ages. 

All the world loves a story; the regret is that 
the great novelists — great in penetration and 
sincerity and style — do not always have the 
story-telling knack. Mr. Marion Crawford 
was, I should say, a far better story-teller than 
Mr. James or Mr. Howells; but I should by no 
means call him a better novelist. A lady of my 
acquaintance makes a point of bestowing copies 
of Mr. Meredith's novels upon young working- 
women whom she seeks to uplift. I am myself 
the most ardent of Meredithians, and yet I 
must confess to a lack of sympathy with this 
lady's high purpose. I will not press the point, 
but a tired working-girl would, I think, be much 
happier with one of my own beribboned con- 
fections than with even Diana the delectable. 

Pleasant it is, I must confess, to hear your 
wares cried by the train-boy; to bend a sympa- 
thetic ear to his recital of your merits, as he 
appraises them; and to watch him beguile your 
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Confessions of a Best-Seller 

fellow travelers with the promise of felicity 
contained between the covers of the book which 
you yourself have devised, pondered, and com- 
mitted to paper. The train-boy's ideas of the 
essentials of entertaining fiction are radically 
unacademic, but he is apt in hitting off the 
commercial requirements. A good book, one of 
the guild told me, should always begin with 
"talking." He was particularly contemptuous 
of novels that open upon landscape and moon- 
light, — these, in the bright lexicon of his 
youthful experience, are well-nigh unsalable. 
And he was equally scornful of the unhappy 
ending. The sale of a book that did not, as he 
put it, "come out right," that is, with the 
merry jingle of wedding-bells, was no less than a 
fraud upon the purchaser. On one well-remem- 
bered occasion my vanity was gorged by the 
sight of many copies of my latest offering in 
the hands of my fellow travelers, as I sped 
from Washington to New York. A poster, 
announcing my new tale, greeted me at the 
station as I took flight; four copies of my book 
were within comfortable range of my eye in 
the chair-car. Before the train started, I was 
231 



Confessions of a Best-Seller 

given every opportunity to add my own book 
to my impedimenta. 

The sensation awakened by the sight of utter 
strangers taking up your story, tasting it wa- 
rily, clinging to it if it be to their liking, or drop- 
ping it wearily or contemptuously if it fail to 
please, is one of the most interesting of the ex- 
periences of authorship. On the journey men- 
tioned, one man slept sweetly through what I 
judged to be the most intense passage in the 
book; others paid me the tribute of absorbed 
attention. On the ferry-boat at Jersey City, 
several copies of the book were interposed be- 
tween seemingly enchanted readers and the 
towers and spires of the metropolis. No one, 
I am sure,will deny to such a poor worm as I 
the petty joys of popular recognition. To see 
one's tale on many counters, to hear one's 
name and titles recited on boats and trains, 
to find in mid-ocean that your works go with 
you down to the sea in ships, to see the familiar 
cover smiling welcome on the table of an ob- 
scure foreign inn, — surely the most grudging 
critic would not deprive a writer of these re- 
wards and delights. 

232 



Confessions of a Best-Seller 

There is also that considerable army of read- 
ers who write to an author in various keys of 
condemnation or praise. I have found my cor- 
respondence considerably augmented by the 
large sales of a book. There are persons who 
rejoice to hold before your eyes your inconsist- 
ences; or who test you, to your detriment, in 
the relentless scale of fact. Some one in the 
Connecticut hills once criticized severely my 
use of "that" and "which," — a case where an 
effort at precision was the offense, — and I was 
involved, before I knew it, in a long corre- 
spondence. I have several times been taken 
severely to task by foes of tobacco for permit- 
ting my characters to smoke. Wine, I have 
found, should be administered to one's charac- 
ters sparingly, and one's hero must never pro- 
duce a flask except for restorative uses, — 
after, let us say, a wild gallop, by night, in the 
teeth of a storm to relieve a beleaguered citadel, 
or when the heroine has been rescued at great 
peril from the clutch of the multitudinous sea. 
Those strange spirits who pour out their souls 
in anonymous letters have not ignored me. I 
salute them with much courtesy, and wish them 

233 



Confessions of a Best-Seller 

well of the gods. Young ladies whose names I 
have Inadvertently applied to my , heroines 
have usually dealt with me in agreeable fashion. 
The impression that authors have an unlimited 
supply of their own wares to give away is re- 
sponsible for the importunity of managers of 
church fairs, philanthropic institutions, and the 
like, who assail one cheerfully through the 
mails. Before autograph-hunters I have always 
been humble; I have felt myself honored by 
their attentions; and In spite of their dread 
phrase, "Thanking you In advance," — which 
might be the shibboleth of their fraternity, from 
its prevalence, — I greet them joyfully, and 
never filch their stamps. 

Now, after all, could anything be less harmful 
than my tales ? The casual meeting of my hero 
and heroine In the first chapter has always been 
marked by the gravest circumspection. My 
melodrama has never been offensively gory, — 
In fact, I have been ridiculed for my bloodless 
combats. My villains have been the sort that 
anyone with any kind of decent bringlng-up 
would hiss. A girl in white, walking beside a 
lake, with a blue parasol swinging back of her 

234 



Confessions of a Best-Seller 

head, need offend no one. That the young man 
emerging from the neighboring wood should 
not recognize her at once as the young woman 
ordained in his grandfather's will as the person 
he must marry to secure the estate, seems 
utterly banal, I confess; but it is the business of 
romance to maintain illusions. Realism, with 
the same agreed state of facts, recognizes the 
girl immediately — and spoils the story. Or I 
might put it thus: in realism, much or all is 
obvious in the first act; in romance, nothing is 
quite clear until the third. This is why romance 
is more popular than realism, for we are all 
children and want to be surprised. Why vil- 
lains should always be so stupid, and why hero- 
ines should so perversely misunderstand the 
noble motives of heroes, are questions I cannot 
answer. Likewise before dear old Mistaken 
Identity — the most venerable impostor in the 
novelist's cabinet — I stand dumbly grateful. 
On the stage, where a plot is most severely 
tested, but where the audience must, we are 
told, always be in the secret, we see constantly 
how flimsy a mask the true prince need wear. 
And the reason for this lies in the primal and — 

235 



Confessions of a Best-Seller 

let us hope — eternal childllkeness of the race. 
The Zeitgeist will not grind us underfoot so long 
as we are capable of joy in make-believe, and 
can renew our youth in the frolics of Peter 
Pan. 

You, sir, who re-read "The Newcom'es" 
every year, and you, madam, reverently dust- 
ing your Jane Austen, — I am sadder than you 
can be that my talent is so slender; but is it not 
a fact that you have watched me at my little 
tricks on the mimic stage, and been just a little 
astonished when the sparrow, and not the dove, 
emerged from the handkerchief? But you pre- 
fer the old writers ; and so, dear friends, do I ! 

Having, as I have confessed, deliberately 
tried my hand at romance merely to see whether 
I could swim the moat under a cloud of the 
enemy's arrows, and to gain experience in the 
mechanism of story-writing, I now declare 
(though with no illusion as to the importance 
of the statement) that I have hung my sword 
over the fireplace; that I shall not again thun- 
der upon the tavern door at midnight; that not 
much fine gold could tempt me to seek, by 
means however praiseworthy, to bring that girl 
236 



Confessions of a Best-Seller 

with the blue parasol to a proper appreciation 
of the young gentleman with the suit-case, who 
even now is pursuing her through the wood to 
restore her lost handkerchief. It has been pleas- 
ant to follow the bright guidon of romance; 
even now, from the window of the tall office- 
building in which I close these reflections, I 
can hear the bugles blowing and look upon 

" Strangest skies and unbeholden seas." 

But I feel reasonably safe from temptation. 
Little that men do is, I hope, alien to me; and 
the life that surges round me, and whose sounds 
rise from the asphalt below, or the hurrying 
feet on the tiles in my own corridor of this steel- 
boned tower, — the faint tinkle of telephones, 
the click of elevator doors, — these things, and 
the things they stand for, speak with deep and 
thrilling eloquence; and he who would serve 
best the literature of his time and country will 
not ignore them. 

THE END 



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CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
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